Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration-everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html <comment><USER2> It's not just the length of the initial contract, it's the lack of a sane "diff" system.

Even if someone is willing and able to read a 44 page contract the first time, the next time version 1.0.1 of something comes out you are generally given a 44.5 page contract to re-agree to. "Somewhere" in there, they changed something; good luck figuring it out. So even if the version you read gave you permission to sue, the amendment that you clicked-through-in-agreement later may have given away that right (an amendment they probably made because somebody sued them).

We solved this type of thing years ago, the solution just hasn't made its way into legalese: use revision control. I wish that large documents were:

\- Publicly revision-controlled with a system that has clients everyone can easily use (i.e. no arcane commands, and push-buttons for the most common things like "compare to last version").

\- Public accountability for the entire revision history of every single line. If somebody wants to add [Horrible Clause A] two months after I first signed it, then I get to know exactly who made the change and if I want to I can take a look at other changes they've made to other documents.

<comment><USER3> What if arbitration clauses are not a problem at all? There is a great deal of contradictory evidence with respect to whether arbitration is more or less favorable to consumers and employees (though it is definitely very bad for class-action lawyers). But even if we assume for the purpose of argument that consumers always lose disputes which are arbitrated, they may be willing to make that trade in exchange for reduced prices on goods and services, as well as higher salaries.

<comment><USER4> That's a good point. One could just argue that in time consumers will just favor contracts with companies that either don't have arbitration clauses or if they do the consumer doesn't care anyway about losing potential disputes. I think it's only really a problem when a company holds a (quasi) monopoly in a certain business. Like telcos do in the US in many states.

<comment><USER5> One could argue that. But markets are mainly good at solving problems that occur frequently and with short feedback loops. The sort of problems that lead to class action lawsuits are rarely either, let alone both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm disappointed that consumer research organizations, such as Consumer Reports, don't include these issues in their reports. For example, their review of many products could include:

* Legal control: Is it free/open? Is the user just a licensee?

* User privacy: Is user data collected? How much? Can the user access it? Does the user control it?

* Legal recourse: Is arbitration required? Are class actions banned?

These issues have a large impact on consumers; I don't understand why they are overlooked. It also would raise awareness, a necessary step in addressing with them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Governor Brown vetoed AB 465 which could have helped put a stop to this with regards to employees having to arbitrate instead of having their day in court. His reason for vetoing AB 465 was that Federal law pre-empts state law. The federal government is too tightly controlled by large corporate interests, and I don't see reform of the Federal Arbitration Act happening any time soon. There are just to many powerful interests with a lot at stake, who would lose if arbitration were reformed at the Federal level. Maybe we should put this on the ballot as an initiative instead. At least it would send a message.

The problems with arbitration is that it does not affect court precedents, the records are private, and there's no jury involved. This all weighs heavily in favor of the employer over the employee.

</comment><comment><USER8> I suspect the fine print will eventually be outlawed for use on the average consumer (unless we radically increase the education of the average consumer). It is well established by now that today's average consumer lacks the reading comprehension level required to fully understand these fine print agreements.

<comment><USER9> I don't know that it's about reading comprehension. I think most consumers could understand them if they put the effort in.

The problem is simply that _people don 't read this stuff in the first place_. They simply sign without reading, assuming/hoping/praying that the terms are reasonable.

And really, can you blame them? Contracts are so vastly overused and they're made with the assumption that the consumer isn't going to read them. Most companies won't give you a two-page contract if a twenty-page contract will do. Many contracts are excessively long and are part of a sales process built on speed that assumes nobody will take the time to read before signing.

I would like to see a change in how contracts are handled, such that if one side knows the other side didn't read before signing, the contract is void. That wouldn't take care of everything (American Express's contract is probably handled by mail, so they can reasonably expect you to read the contract at leisure in your home before you sign) but it would put a stop to abusive situations in retail, where they had you a bunch of paperwork to sign. If they had to actually watch you and make sure you read it all before signing, the contracts would probably become a _lot_ shorter. If people got used to reading the things, then it might even change their habits for other scenarios like doing stuff through the mail.

However, I also think it is completely insane that contracts are allowed to put any restrictions on either party's access to courts. The whole point of courts is to be the arbiter when something goes wrong. A clause saying that you must use some third-party arbitration service instead of the courts, or a clause saying that you agree not to participate in class-action lawsuits, should be completely unenforceable, just like a clause that says you agree to become the other party's slave.

<comment><USER10> >Most consumers... They simply sign without reading...

You seem to be implying that many people on HN do read them, and if that's the case, I would be very surprised. I certainly don't. There's frequently a new EULA I have to consent to when I update iOS, or iTunes, or some app, or sign into a cloud console, and the list goes on. If I read all of them it would probably add up to a good workday every week. I'm willing to bet that the number of people who are willing to devote that large a chunk of their lives to reading EULAS is somewhere near zero.

<comment><USER11> I edit the HTML on most end user agreements I sign to read, "I disagree and waive no rights," then I click that button.

I wonder in what sense these agreements are enforceable when they cannot prove that people actually agreed with them? Hard copies of contracts are kept for a reason, I always assumed.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, changing the text on your end has no legal effect. It's not a contract unless the other party agrees to your change.

<comment><USER9> Turning into "not a contract" is a legal effect, though, and typically it's the desired one.

When there's a EULA or similar, the company is trying to form a contract with you, usually with lots of unfair terms.

If replacing the text with your own and clicking a button that you renamed from Agree to Disagree voids the whole thing, well, mission accomplished.

There would only be a problem if the law says that not only does your modification not form a contract, but that you acted in such bad faith that you actually still somehow agreed to the _original_ contract.

<comment><USER13> "voiding the whole thing" means you don't have a license to the software either.

<comment><USER9> Software doesn't necessarily need a license. Purchasing software can be simply a matter of handing over money in exchange for a copy of the software. Free downloads can simply be a matter of downloading a copy of the software. EULAs are everywhere, but not because they're _necessary_ , only because software makers see some advantage in using them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm going to take a contrary point of view: Class action lawsuits (where a group of customers sue a company that they purchased a product from) are almost always pointless and expensive wastes of money, and we should encourage contracts to forbid them.

* Many class-action suits end up with a result of lawyers get $50 million, and everyone who bought a product gets a coupon for more of that product.

* The threshold for what can be the basis of a class-action is extremely low.

* A good portion of "legitimate" class-action suits could also be construed as federal fraud / false advertising suits. (the example of a bank selling insurance that couldn't possibly be used would be an example)

All of these are different from, say, a town suing a company for environmental damage. In that case, there's no contract between the individual citizens of the town and the company, so this trend won't impact those lawsuits at all.

<comment><USER5> You're missing the social value of class action lawsuits.

There are basically three ways to have reasonably well run open markets: individual action, state action, and collective action.

Individual action often makes no sense. If a company shafts me for $10, I'm not going to spent the thousands or millions necessary to prove the error. I'll just write it off and be less trusting next time. But if a company can screw each American out of $10, they've made $3.2 billion, which is a great incentive, and also provides for fantastic legal defense. Net result: a lot of people have bad experiences, reducing consumer trust and making innovation harder.

State action is also often problematic. It's not bad at some things. But especially at HN, we don't want to encourage this as the primary means of market regulation. Governments are slow to move and risk averse. It's easier and safer for them to over-regulate, favoring incumbents and limiting innovation to what they can be persuaded to permit. (See, e.g., the car market.)

Class action, on the other hand, fills an important gap. Companies know that they can't just screw everybody without risking a big lawsuit and a big payout. But plenty of problems get solved without government having to intervene. Class action basically allows for a "forgiveness, not permission" model for regulation. As long as your customers are happy and you treat them fairly, your risk is low.

If class action stops working as a way of redressing grievances, we'll see a lot of people agitating for increased government regulation. As an entrepreneur, I'd hate to see that happen.

<comment><USER15> This is a great response. Maybe there is another way to prevent class action abuse but it's not through forced arbitration.

My small claim was removed to arbitration against my objections, and they actually mention me in the NYTimes article: [https://medium.com/p/faq- citibank-the-aaa-and-arbitration-my...](https://medium.com/p/faq-citibank-the- aaa-and-arbitration-my-experience-fighting-for-quick-dispute- resolution-427281c3b134)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think it would be much better to make these obligatory consumer and employee contracts unenforceable to begin with instead of trying to fix this arbitration issue. They are predatory and exist only to protect the interest of these corporations. Everyday life shouldn't be a legal negotiation.

<comment><USER17> I would argue they are unenforceable "adhesion" contracts, which are basically non-negotiable contracts where one party has more power over the other, such as rental car, cell phone, and back of the form type contracts. Arbitration clauses are not some giant conspiracy by big business. The courts have been pushing it for years. True, they found a loophole to avoid class action suits, but this could be easily remedied by the legislatures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a symptom of collapsing faith in the American judiciary. Individuals can't trust that innocence and good faith will protect them, and corporations have the same problem. This is their solution.

</comment><comment><USER15> You can read about my experience having my small claim removed to arbitration here: [https://medium.com/p/faq-citibank-the-aaa-and-arbitration- my...](https://medium.com/p/faq-citibank-the-aaa-and-arbitration-my- experience-fighting-for-quick-dispute-resolution-427281c3b134)

The NYTimes mentions me but completely skips the small claims removal portion, which is a bit frustrating. Right or wrong, individuals should be allowed to resolve disputes quickly and cheaply.

</comment><comment><USER19> Above all, the purpose of arbitration clauses in consumer contracts is to eliminate class action lawsuits. Which may or may not be a good thing depending on your point of view. In the long run, companies will probably not see sustained relief from scrutiny of their practices. You'll likely see a move to a more European model, with fewer lawsuits but more aggressive consumer protection agencies.

</comment><comment><USER20> > At the other end of the spectrum, the chamber also criticized so-called > coupon lawsuits that generated big paydays for lawyers and little money for > consumers.

So what? If the customers feel they were wronged and the court agrees, the company should give restitution. It is sad that the victims will get hardly anything, but getting 0.05% of a wrongfully-charged fee back is better than 0%. And the class suit was the only way a large malicious corporation would ever be held accountable, but they're trying to distract from that by complaining that someone else gets their money that was found to be unlawfully obtained.

> In interviews, corporate executives and defense lawyers predicted that > consumers would use arbitration once it became more familiar.

So the old way was bad because ambulance-chasing lawyers sucked up all the money. Now there's hardly any consumer recourse happening, but it's OK, eventually they'll start hiring some lawyers... who for some reason will be a good deal for the consumers this time. It's a good thing we have a coalition of banks' lawyers looking out for the consumers' interests. /s

> "Clients were telling me they were getting killed by frivolous lawsuits and > asking me what on earth could be done about it," Mr. Kaplinsky said.

If a lawsuit can "kill" you, was it really frivolous? I am considering both a plaintiff-won suit that extracts millions from the company, or a plaintiff- lost suit that cost the company tens of thousands to defend. It would seem to me that in the former case, the judge decided they were in the wrong, so it's not frivolous. In the latter case, the more it costs to defend, the more likely it is that the plaintiffs had a reasonable complaint. I know I'm biased, but am I being naive here? It also bothers me to hear a complaint about what a corporation finds "frivolous" when the individuals on the other end are facing fraudulent charges, sub-minimum wages, and unchecked monopolostic abuse -- "frivolous" is the least of the individuals' complaints, by why is only the huge corporation's concerns protected by the law here?

</comment><comment><USER21> The post is about consumers but there are cases when an employers's binding arbitration agreement is void. I am writing an article and will post when finished. It's important that employees know our rights.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is why strong consumer protection laws and regulation is good. They generate set of standards for enforceable contracts and remove surprises.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Yet it appears a significant reason for the emergence of this phenomenon is the regulatory statute of the FAA which elevates arbitration to the same standard as contracts, and preempts state decisions on their enforcement, and moreover has had its restrictions (i.e. ability to waive class action in arbitration clauses) subsequently reaffirmed by SCOTUS.

As such, this has only _created_ more surprises. But it's a folly to call it a failure due to lack of regulation, since this all takes place in an environment that is already heavily, and in fact often incomprehensibly regulated. The verbosity of standard-form contracts isn't incidental.

<comment><USER19> That's a very misleading characterization. The purpose of the FAA is to eliminate judge-created exceptions to enforceability of arbitration contracts. The premise is that arbitration clauses should be enforced the same as any other voluntary contractual provision and that the judiciary shouldn't be allowed to give such provisions special treatment. The verbosity of form contracts has nothing to do with regulation or the FAA, except to the extent that they waive "default rules" which often protect consumers.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In a law-heavy society, the rich, powerful and savvy can easily wield law preparation to exploit the average joe. It's been trending that way in the US since the beginning.

<comment><USER19> And in a law-light society what happens when your phone company charges you $600 to cancel?

<comment><USER24> They hire their thugs to break your kneecaps when you don't pay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> When this sets precedence, the possibilities for customers to defend their rights will be largely diminished.

One further step in direction to almighty international corporations and right-less countries and people. Already, many countries are regularly blackmailed by the big corporations.

The TTIP proceedings are also controlled by the industry lobbyists -- that is the reason, that those are kept so secret, that even the parliaments of EU countries are not allowed access to the data. With such regulations like TTIP, the possibilities to abolish customer laws in the countries will be also largely enlarged.

</comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps companies that choose not to do this can market their products with an "100%-arbitration-clause-free!! " slogan somewhere. Then we could hope this catches on.

Corporations are assuming that we don't pay attention to this. It's OK to give an app or a business a 1-star review on the reason that the arbitration clause makes you uncomfortable.

</comment><comment><USER27> Arbitration should probably be a near mandatory starter. What shouldn't be allowed, however, is absolute binding arbitration, where, constitutionally guaranteed, access to courts is disallowed.

Probably, a public arbiter would be highly successful. There is great need for arbitration and those who do it best could be rewarded appropriately.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've always wondered: since I don't have the ability or power to negotiate these contracts, are they even a legal contract regardless of if I agree to them?

Moreover, as a consumer, all (or nearly all) establishments that sell similar products use similar contracts, so do I actually have a choice?

<comment><USER29> They are generally legally enforceable contracts but sometimes not: see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_of_adhesion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_of_adhesion).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The term activist judges is normally used against liberal judges but the corporate lawyers that Bush installed into the federal courts have been overturning long established laws and precedents at an astonishing pace.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am very familiar with arbitration agreements and how they both are enforced and came about. For years companies have tried in vain to get theses clauses accepted by the courts and failed, until recently when SCOTUS chimed in with their decision: Congress wanted the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) of the 1920s to be the law of the land and forced arbitration was considered statutorily okay.. The FAA [ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act), 1925] originally was a maritime law, where two parties in different countries would rather pick an arbiter to decide their dispute rather than in any one country.

What may surprise people is it's not just the signing of a contract, which enables this clause to be enforced, but also just a business' intent to settle cases arbitrarily. For instance, opening up a package of something you just bought might show intent that the contract therein is what you agree to. One nurse wasn't going to sign her rights away to an arbitration agreement, so she told her company 'no' to renegotiating her employment contract. But the courts upheld that she knew the intent of her employer and forced her into arbitration.

These companies are hiring their own judges, basically. What's scary is that these just aren't private contracts, and private court systems we are dealing with -- but private law!

SCOTUS ruled recently that even if the parties do not like the outcome of the arbitration decision, they have no legal recourse. Imagine going into a situation where a company knows the history of a judges decision and you do not? How incredibly unfair, let alone intimidating. I wouldn't even bother to sue, would you?

I won't go on about this. I can write a lot. Here's a list of links I collected about companies shorting the normal process of laws that protect citizens. The area is non-compete agreements:

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/more-firms-requiring-non- co...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/more-firms-requiring-non-compete- agreements-2013-07-05)

[http://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/labor- employment/b/l...](http://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/labor- employment/b/labor-employment-top-blogs/archive/2012/11/26/u-s-supreme-court- arbitrator-must-decide-on-validity-of-noncompete-agreement.aspx)

[http://rickmasseyblog.com/2010/10/04/are-you-trapped-by-a- no...](http://rickmasseyblog.com/2010/10/04/are-you-trapped-by-a-non-compete- agreement-with-your-last-employer/)

[http://www.romingerlegal.com/floridacourts/court_opinions2/5...](http://www.romingerlegal.com/floridacourts/court_opinions2/5D01-2298.op.html)

[http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/adr/articl...](http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/adr/articles/winter2013-032713-federal- arbitration-act.html)

[http://www.justice.org/cps/rde/justice/hs.xsl/19905.htm](http://www.justice.org/cps/rde/justice/hs.xsl/19905.htm)

[http://www.flacorplaw.com/Non-Competes.html](http://www.flacorplaw.com/Non- Competes.html)

[http://thenoncompeteblog.com/2013/01/18/prominent-florida- ch...](http://thenoncompeteblog.com/2013/01/18/prominent-florida-chef-sued- for-violating-non-compete-agreement/)

[http://floridamediationgroup.com/articles/spero/2000_Employe...](http://floridamediationgroup.com/articles/spero/2000_Employer_employee_non- compete_agreements_in_florida.html)

__[http://www.noncompetenews.com/?tag=/Arbitration](http://www.noncompetenews.com/?tag=/Arbitration)

[http://www.franczek.com/frontcenter-Nitro- Lift_Arbitration_N...](http://www.franczek.com/frontcenter-Nitro- Lift_Arbitration_Non-Compete_Agreement.html)

__[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-01/jobs/sns-20120...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-01/jobs/sns-201207251300 --tms--careersntp--h-a20120801-20120801_1_mandatory-arbitration-arbitration- clause-mandate-arbitration)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quZL7WKLXt4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quZL7WKLXt4)

</comment><comment><USER32> Previously submitted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10482504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10482504)

</comment><comment><USER13> > "Claims are decided by a neutral arbitrator."

1\. Why can't consumers take a class action to an arbitrator for resolution.

2\. Why can't consumers shut down these arbitrators, by suing with a claim that the arbitrators are not neutral? It is impossible for a company to single-handedly choose a "neutral" arbitrator.

<comment><USER33> Many of the clauses reprinted in the article specify "individual arbitration."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It should be illegal to "sign away" legal protections that you're afforded under the law.

<comment><USER35> It probably should not be uniformly illegal. For example, settling a lawsuit generally involves promising not to sue. Perhaps such agreements need to be supervised, which would take them out of the domain of "click-through" contracts.

<comment><USER36> That's not even an important requirement though. If you settle a lawsuit and then sue anyways the judge can look at the original issue and the aftermath and choose to throw it out as you have been compensated at that point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Many companies make opt out clauses - can we make an program that does automatically?

<comment><USER38> I've never heard of that. Can you provide one example of a company that allows you to opt out of binding arbitration?

<comment><USER39> Dropbox: [https://www.dropbox.com/privacy#terms](https://www.dropbox.com/privacy#terms)

Opt-out of Agreement to Arbitrate. You can decline this agreement to arbitrate by clicking here and submitting the opt-out form within 30 days of first accepting these Terms.

Which links to [https://www.dropbox.com/arbitration_optout](https://www.dropbox.com/arbitration_optout)

<comment><USER13> Wow that's a skeezy place to bury it. Their email drip spampaigns don't remind me to check the arbitration options when they tell me all about how to make the most of my new account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Dispute resolution is a problem where there are always more disputes to resolve than there are resources to do them adequately. There's a reason lawsuits are the exclusive domain of the wealthy, because if we let everyone use the system, it would collapse under its own weight.

The right way to solve resource allocation problems is through the market which inevitably makes tradeoffs. Arbitration is just such a market solution. What's nice about market solutions is that we can regulate them. But it takes a long time to know what the regulations should be. Until then it's buyer beware.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wait, isn't this the exact kind of abuse the CFPB was created to address? Why haven't they taken any steps to curb this behavior among banks?

</comment><comment><USER41> Hey thanks for that - I just got my first credit card in years and just managed to come in under the 45-day wire to opt out of that clause.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is the second step of undermining individual liberties in favor of corporate oligarchies, by subverting the justice system. Thr first step, of course, was subverting the legislative system via citizens united, turning elections into bidding wars.

There isn't much left to do now except slowly turn the dials.

EDIT: I guess the obvious next step is subverting state authority entirely, through things like the TPA, that put corporate interests above that of "democratically" elected states.

</comment><comment><USER42> The most concerning thing to me in this article is the account of SCOTUS rewriting the Federal Arbitration Act from the bench.

<comment><USER13> Eh, once Congress starts acting in bad faith against citizens, what's the harm in SCOTUS exceeding its authority? The law derives is legitimacy from its effect on the society it governs, not from the grace of God.</comment></comment>


Freeciv WebGL 3D release candidate 1 is out - <AUTHOR> http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/01/freeciv-webgl-3d-release-candidate-1-is-out/ <comment><AUTHOR> Please post your feedback here. Thanks!</comment>


Memories of positive associations get written onto DNA - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/08/memories-of-positive-associations-get-written-onto-dna/ <comment><USER2> This is fascinating but unsurprising given all the things that have come out lately with regard to epigenetics. If your mental model of DNA involves some image of a pristine blueprint that is followed with clockwork-like precision in the exact same way by every cell in your body, your model needed updating quite some time ago.

I feel that many researchers, even geneticists who should know better, still have not internalized the idea that epigenetics is pretty good evidence that somatic DNA is a read/write medium. This leads to sloppy thinking about genetic causes of disease as well as continued persistence of the idea that if we can just collect enough sequences, all genetic causes of disease might be found.

<comment><USER3> By this argument, culture can be imprinted into DNA too, no?

This also implies that it would be much tougher to do a Jurassic Park recreation, because the environment is different. You can't just start from scratch with the DNA.

Or am I misinterpreting?

<comment><USER4> You are misinterpreting. As others have noted, this is DNA in the nuclei of nerve cells, not gametes. It is not heritable.

<comment><USER5> This, thank you. People often forget about this when they are thinking about environmental elements modifying DNA.

<comment><USER6> Although the primary structure of DNA remains unaltered it is still possible for the environment to alter the traits of offspring: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetics)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Methylation can happen in gametes also, making some epigenetic changes heritable. The precise mechanisms of methylation are under intense study, but not well understood; it doesn't appear to be a random process in general.

This points to an almost-paradox in biology, which I call Lamarck's Lemma: There may be evolutionary advantage to being able to pass on acquired traits to one's offspring, and no known physical law that prevents it. Why, therefore, would biology not develop at least some Lamarckian mechanisms, since they could offer fitness in the Darwinian sense?

Answer: there appears to be exactly that. It's an exciting time for genetics.

<comment><USER8> I don't see why it's a paradox. Lots of things would offer fitness - why can't all animals talk? Why can't plants move? Surely these things would offer greater Darwinian fitness.

<comment><USER7> I did want to address one other total misconception here: Darwinian fitness is a result, not an effect. There is _no_ adaptation, at all, which predictably increases fitness. Evolution is not a direction.

"Surely these things would offer greater Darwinian fitness" is as basic a mistake as "Surely we can figure out whether this program will halt without running it".

EDIT: In fact, as I think about it, there is a deep connection between the thought "Knowing the genes of this organism, we may predict its fitness" and "Knowing the instructions of this program, we may predict its halting". I'd love to see a paper on that.

<comment><USER9> That doesn't seem rit to me. There's lots of adaptations that could probably increase fitness of offspring as a function of the parent's environment. In the same way, you can look at some programs and predict whether they halt, just not all programs, and potentially not even all "interesting" programs, for some definition of interesting.

<comment><USER10> You contradict your own point though: yes, we can predict - but we can't _know_ that a program - an arbitrary program - will halt.

Evolution is much the same, but most people are worse at it because they make the mistake of prioritizing human-values as evolutionary advantages for all species.

For example, cows get slaughtered by the billion by humans. But they're an evolutionary success story from a Darwinian perspective: by being easy to domesticate by early tribes and delicious, they've proliferated far beyond anything which would've happened un-aided by humans.

<comment><USER11> For any arbitrary program, we _may_ be able to _know_ that it will halt.

<comment><USER12> For any very simple arbitrary program, perhaps. But certainly not in general. That's sort of the point of the Halting Problem: you can't know because it is undecidable.

Of course, there are simple and trivial programs that can be specifically analyzed, but we're definitely not to that level on any of the stuff under discussion here. The analogy really is pretty apt.

<comment><USER11> The halting problem is undecidable much like logic is incomplete. There will always be true statements we can't prove, and there will always be programs that might or might not halt. That doesn't mean that we can't prove lots of interesting things, it just means we can't promise to prove it when handed a program. We can try, and sometimes we'll succeed.

<comment><USER10> The thing is a very simple program can be argued to be have been executed by the person's reading it. You know it halts because you look at the code, step through it mentally and - hey, it halts.

But that's the nature of the problem: you know it halts because just executed it till it halts.

<comment><USER11> Yes, running them until they halt is one way of determining that a program halts on a given input. However, we can prove things do or don't halt without that. Consider running, on an idealized machine (so no overflows),

        while(i>0) { i * 2; }

I think you would agree that this clearly never halts for any i > 0, and I think it also clear that we did not determine that by running it until it did not halt (because there is no such point).

Turing proved that _for some programs_ there is nothing we can do but run them and see. That doesn't mean that's all we can ever do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd need to read the paper, but the write up seems to ignore the possibility that methylation is required to express the genes necessary to form memories, and not that the methylation itself is, in any meaningful sense, the memory itself (as in "memories [...] get written onto DNA).

<comment><USER13> This was my first reaction as well. Blocking methylation is a drastically global operation for a cell as methylation is involved in so much of the epigenetic regulation. Turning it off probably disabled much of the normal functioning of those cells and could have had all kinds of downstream effects.

It doesn't seem fair to jump to the conclusion that the memory is actually encoded in the methylation pattern somehow. Based on a skim of the paper, the researchers don't seem to claim this either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm hoping this turns out to be incorrect - a false lead. It would really suck if in order to download mindstates, we needed to get inside the chemistry of neuronal cells.

We can conceivably find an imaging technique that would let us 3D snapshot a brain and all it's connections. But its a big step from that big step down to getting nanoscopic views of the chemistry in every cell.

<comment><USER14> If you want to download a mindstate, you will almost have to deal with details at a molecular level. I am not familiar with the details of how the brain works, but consider that their is likely a huge evolutionary advantage to storing data more densely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dodgy newspaper pop-sci interpretation involving past lives in 3..2..1..

<comment><USER16> While snarky, you're right. Also see the 1910-1940 idea of "Racial Memory". One of the more popular and weird ideas to come out of Lamarkian concepts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There was an interesting article in the Discover magazine about epigenetic changes: [http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas- experiences...](http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences- leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes)

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting that they could also block memory formation in addiction centers. I wonder if there is a preventative treatment possible in that direction, by blocking addiction before it happens? It's a nice dream, anyway.

<comment><USER19> Err, err, centralized government bureaucracy imposing own will-of-committee between world and consciousness to inflict totalitarian conformance to pre- approved homogeneity ... not good, even if: drugs/childporn/terrorism/etc.

<comment><USER18> What makes you think this is pushed by the government? I'm envisioning opt-in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So... the premise of Alien 4 might not be as ridiculous as it seemed at the time? :O

</comment><comment><USER21> The takeaway: ASSASSIN'S CREED WAS RIGHT!!oen1

:-D

</comment><comment><USER22> I really like the potential implications of this to future A.I. research. ;)

</comment><comment><USER23> Genetic memory.</comment>


Watchdog: U.S. Paid for 'World's Most Expensive' Gas Station in Afghanistan - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/02/453979013/watchdog-u-s-paid-for-worlds-most-expensive-gas-station-in-afghanistan <comment><USER2> Also related, Vice has been covering this for awhile now and had a great piece on HBO (er, well-produced piece). Another example of the horrible spending: contractors spent $300 million to build a power plant to power Kabul, but this plant is not being used because the cost to run the plant is too expensive...so they import electricity from Kazakhstan and China (4:00 mark)[0]. We also purchased $700 million of new Russian airplanes and helicopters for the Afghan Air Force that they can't fly (7:20 mark)[0].

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CvWJVtEkUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CvWJVtEkUE) [1][https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-just-cant-stop- blowing-...](https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-just-cant-stop-blowing- billions-in-afghanistan) [2][https://news.vice.com/article/us-aid-to- afghanistan-has-larg...](https://news.vice.com/article/us-aid-to-afghanistan- has-largely-been-wasted-and-stolen-report-says)

<comment><USER3> This has been standard practice for projects in Afghanistan since the start of the war. It unfolds something like this:

U.S. gov'nt wants a new well built in some remote village and ask for bids. Western companies bid and win the contract...let's say for $10,000 (not an unrealistic number). The western company sub's out the project to a local company...usually a joint western/local setup for let's say $1000. The sub sub's it out to some local team for let's say $100. The local team hires some guy to go to the next village over and take a picture of an existing well for $10 as proof that the well was built and submits that picture all the way up the line of contractors. The western gov'nt accepts this as proof b/c no one wants to go out into the "hostile" villages to see if the well was actually built.

This has been going on for nearly 15 years now on projects small and grand. It's common knowledge among anyone from there, with relatives there, who has worked there, etc. The information is not new or hard to uncover. It is simply not news worthy in western media.

<comment><USER4> After reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man[1], by John Perkins, it sounds like this has been standard practice since _at least_ the cold war.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A related article from the OP is "Watchdog: $7 Billion U.S. Effort Doesn't Dent Afghan Poppy Production" (2014) [0]

I hadn't heard of this, but it is unfortunately not surprising. Less surprising than the world's most expensive gas station.

So much apathy...

[0] [http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2014/10/21/357839094/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2014/10/21/357839094/watchdog-7-billion-u-s-effort-doesnt-dent-afghan- poppy-production)

<comment><USER6> Letsee, If Methadone/suboxone treatment costs $4k/year, that would have paid for 1.75 million patient-years of therapy. And employed a lot of US health care workers. And prevented who knows how much crime, child neglect, missed work...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What sucks is that in the end this will be swept under the rug and no one will be held accountable for lining their own pockets.

</comment><comment><USER8> DoD... isn't that the department for which then Secretary (Donald Rumsfeld) admitted "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions"? Interestingly, he announced that, along with the "War on Waste", on Sept. 10, 2001. [1]

[1] [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-war-on- waste/](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-war-on-waste/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Another one for the record books!!!</comment>


HTML5 Tidy: The granddaddy of HTML tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.html-tidy.org/ <comment><USER2> I wrote a ruby gem that wraps the HTML tidy executable for local HTML validation. Disclaimer: It is vetted with the HTML 5 compatible tidy version, but I haven't tried it out with this new version yet. Pull requests welcome.

[https://github.com/ericbeland/html_validation](https://github.com/ericbeland/html_validation)

</comment><comment> martin-adams The one thing I find missing on the site is, when would I use it? What benefit or problem is it solving?

Can anyone share when they've found this to be useful? For example, does it compress HTML for faster page loads, or fix invalid HTML (e.g. from wysiwyg editors).

<comment><USER3> tidy is a swiss army knife for HTML and XML... it does the things you said and a lot more.

Pretty printing, switching encodings, conversions between HTML/XHTML, validation, removing those stupid quotation marks that MS Word litters all over the place in its vain attempt to ruin the universe... many annoying problems with HTML are easily solved with tidy

</comment></comment><comment> hans-olo The section with the red background is very bright -- it is difficult to read the text.

Please include examples of files cleaned with the tool.

</comment><comment><USER4> Screenshots. Show input & output.

<comment><USER5> [http://www.html-tidy.org/documentation/#part_what](http://www.html- tidy.org/documentation/#part_what)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now, if someone could tell me how to use it within PHP...

My company created an open-source HTML-diffing PHP package[0] that could be considerably improved by replacing the old Tidy with the HTML5 Tidy (if I only knew how!)

[0] [https://github.com/gathercontent/htmldiff](https://github.com/gathercontent/htmldiff)

<comment><USER7> You're using the PHP extension based on libtidy:

[https://github.com/gathercontent/htmldiff/blob/master/compos...](https://github.com/gathercontent/htmldiff/blob/master/composer.json#L21)

[http://php.net/manual/en/book.tidy.php](http://php.net/manual/en/book.tidy.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Doesn't support tabs, can go DIAF. :-p Or jump in a lake, you downvoting sourpuss sissypants you!

Recently went to check, after a >1 decade break. The man page is 5000 words, tons and tons and tons of options. No tabs though.

Edit: apparently this feature got added last May! Just waiting on my distro now. Sweet! [https://github.com/htacg/tidy- html5/issues/108](https://github.com/htacg/tidy-html5/issues/108)</comment>


7 Months Into My 2nd Stint as a Startup CEO  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.socialmedian.com/2008/08/7_months_into_my_2nd_stint_as.html

<comment><USER2> @augustus -- I encourage you to "dig" a little deeper. socialmedian = social news meets the social graph. Very different from Digg, although our roots are from their foundation. What we're trying to do here is personalized news at the topical level -- more about "me" informed by "we" vs. just a popularity contest. Poke around and would love your feedback.

<comment><USER3> You are currently forcing people to create an account to see anything besides the Digg-like front page. I recommend you let people explore around before forcing them to sign in. If you really do have something that's different than Digg, you have to let potential users see it.

<comment><USER2> Yes, we agree. We are working to get rid of all the registration requirements. It was just a holdover from our alpha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. $40K/month burn? 11 developers? That's a tight budget?

<comment><USER2> with 12 people $40k/month total burn is like paying each person around $30k/year annual salary when you factor in other expenses like equipment, telecom, travel, etc. So yeah, that's pretty tight.

<comment><USER4> It's not the $40K that's surprising, it's the 11 developers. I'd have guessed 3-4 (and consequently a lot lower burn).

Burning over a quarter of a million in 7 months on a web app sounds like a lot these days, but I'm not out there doing it, so what do I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love his execution advice and I have bookmarked it.

The only problem is the site is no different than digg.

<comment><USER3> There certainly are a lot of digg clones nowadays. I wonder if it will be like search where everyone thinks it's a crowded market for a solved problem and then someone with an actually intelligent algorithm comes along and mops up.

<comment><USER6> I think it's more than an algorithm problem: initially with a site like that, it's all about _getting more people_ , because without them, the site is worth nothing. Then, all of a sudden, _poof_ , you succeed, but you get a bunch of flaming morons, and the quality goes down the tubes. Maybe you're in a position to make some money, but I wouldn't consider something like reddit or digg an unqualified 'success' in terms of making the world a better place.</comment></comment></comment>


SelfEncapsulation - <AUTHOR> https://martinfowler.com/bliki/SelfEncapsulation.html <comment><AUTHOR> One of the problems with mandatory (and strict) self-encapsulation is that it removes the benefit of having accessors in the first place: the ability to change the accessor to do something else.

If you change an accessor to do more than just provide access to the variable, it really isn't no longer an accessor, and thus shouldn't be accessing the variable.

This is particularly noticeable with Objective-C properties, which enforce these rules at the language level. In essence, they turn objects into expensive structs, at least from an encapsulation point of view.</comment>


Hitchhiker's Guide to Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kennethreitz/python-guide <comment><USER2> Python: Mostly harmless.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope the guide is more original than its title.

</comment><comment><USER4> So, writing a book is now called "development"?</comment>


Paul Graham and "It turns out" - <AUTHOR> http://jsomers.net/blog/it-turns-out <comment> daniel-cussen I think Douglas Adams talked about how he used that phrase in Salmon of Doubt:

"Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression 'it turns out' to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It's great. It's hugely better than its predecessors 'I read somewhere that...' or the craven 'they say that...' because it suggests not only that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it's research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight."

<comment><USER2> Funny this was also the top-voted comment on the previous discussion of this same post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1163040>

<comment><USER3> I just want to know how you managed to resist phrasing your statement as:

"It turns out this was also the top-voted comment on the previous discussion of this same post..."

<comment><USER4> Because, If we were to do so, "it turns out" would be immediately followed by a citation of the authority in question?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1162965>

(How did this even get posted?)

It's a really good post though.

<comment><USER6> I think the dupe-detector only checks against URLs that have already been lazy-loaded into memory since the last time the server was restarted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I often use it in a slightly different role: to introduce a new idea or discovery I've made without sounding like I'm fishing for compliments:

"I've thought a lot about a better way to implement this circuit, and it turns out that there is one."

I'm sure I subconsciously use it for the "appeal to invisible authority" thing, too.

</comment><comment><USER8> The following comment on the blog cracked me up, mainly because of how true it is.

Bob says:

August 25, 2010 at 6:21 am

one word: "RADIOLAB"

</comment><comment><USER9> ''in other words, because "it turns out" is the sort of phrase you would use to convey, for example, something unexpected about a phenomenon you've studied extensively—as in the scientist saying "…but the E. coli turned out to be totally resistant"—or some buried fact that you have recently discovered on behalf of your readers—as when the Malcolm Gladwells of the world say "…and it turns out all these experts have something in common: 10,000 hours of deliberate practice"—readers are trained, slowly but surely, to be disarmed by it.''

i —like— writers who use —dashes— extensively

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson#Structure_and_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson#Structure_and_syntax)

<comment><USER10> I use dashes a lot when I write - it tells a person, keep going, the thought you're about to read is still part of one thought, but separate slightly from the first part of the sentence.

While it looks ugly under analysis and would get you marked down by an English teacher, I find it pretty good at communicating quickly and getting points across.

<comment><USER9> \--I use dashes a lot when I write--

ive been experimenting with a writing style that used hyphen as the only punctuation - <http://makebelieve1.wordpress.com/about/> \- but i realized that wordpress.com converts hyphens with spaces on either side into en-dashes and two hyphens into em-dashes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really used to like that phrase; it makes real life into more of a narrative. Now it's becoming overused (that's not pg's fault). I'm avoiding it. Quel dommage.

<comment><USER12> In academic writing it's been overused for at least 10 years now, to the point where some reviewers will complain if you use it in a paper. Apart from being overused, in a lot of contexts it's something of an abdication of responsibility: _you_ really did something, or are arguing something, but are trying to do a coy "well lookee, what did we find here" routine.</comment></comment>


TempleOS: 5 minute random code walkthrough - <AUTHOR> http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/WalkThru.html <comment><USER2> These videos already make me inordinately happy, because everything about templeos is beautiful, and having it explained is so very nice. However the most beautiful take-away from these videos to me is that Terry has a bird. :)

<comment><USER3> His voice seems much calmer in this video. I hope that's an indication he's doing well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I want to build in some kind of primitive networking into this OS - just so one machine can talk to another... it's on my side project list. Anyone had much experience with the code?

Also - Love the positive comments in this thread. Proud of this community.

<comment><USER5> I think the maintainer has said that God forbids networking. This seemed irrational to everyone, and then the NSA scandal happened, so I'm inclined to side with Terry on this one.

<comment><USER6> Specifically, his belief is that God forbids networking in TempleOS, not other OS's. (Otherwise he wouldn't maintain a website, upload YouTube videos, or comment on HN.) It may not be a good idea to add networking to TempleOS, since he may take that as an affront to his religion.

Also, if code has no license, then apparently it's equivalent to having an "All Rights Reserved" notice, preventing any re-use of the code at all, according to [http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/21/unlicensed- cod...](http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/21/unlicensed-code- movement-or-madness/)

"Experienced developers won't touch unlicensed code because they have no legal right to use it." [http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/23/unlicensed- cod...](http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/23/unlicensed-code-is-it- ever-ok/)

So if TempleOS has no license, then it may not be strictly legal to add networking support and then re-release the code. Glancing at the "Downloads" section shows no mention of a license. Of course, no one is going to be able to enforce those protections in Terry's case, but if it's likely to simultaneously offend him and be illegal, is it a good idea?

What a strange situation.

EDIT: TempleOS turns out to be in the public domain.

<comment><USER7> According to [http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/TempleOS.html](http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/TempleOS.html), it's public domain. There shouldn't be any licensing troubles, at least.

 _TempleOS is an x86_64, multi-tasking, multi-cored, public domain, open source, ring-0-only, single-address-map (identity-mapped), non networked, PC operating system for recreational programming._

<comment><USER6> Aha, there it is. Thank you!

I wish there was a way to simply ask Terry if he'd have a problem with someone adding networking support. Does anyone know if he responds to email?

<comment><USER8> He has for me before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It makes me sad that even with his illness he delivered more working code than I probably will ever do. Maybe not because I can't, but because I procastinate so much and I really have hard time focusing on doing work.

<comment><USER10> Work is hard, and staying on task in the face of digital distractions is harder still, but you can do it.

My philosophy is that in order to battle distractions, you need a more structured environment. Sure, some can manage without, but I think those people are probably outliers. Most of us are click-happy, trivia collecting pseudo-information junkies.

In school, that structure was created by classes, tests, assignments, due dates, etc. Those may seem like external factors, and yet they _can_ be traced back to you: at some point you probably _chose_ your course load and schedule, you likely _chose_ your degree, and even the act of attending a college in the first place was, arguably, a choice.

College was a maze of your own creation, and you were the mouse running through it. After academia, though, that structure disappears. If you want it back, you have to go back to playing the roles of two different people: the visionary CEO of your life, who sets the broad agenda, milestones and deadlines, and the engineer who implements that vision.

Concretely, that means you need to break down big tasks into smaller ones, and deciding that those smaller tasks need to be done in a concrete amount of time, such as "today", "this week", or "this month". Make a calendar, put it up on a wall, make it visible. The structure dissolves if you ignore it, so make it hard to ignore it.

Oh, and invest in some of that "grit" everyone seems to be talking about: [http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/measuring-self- contr...](http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/measuring-self-control-a- marshmallow-test-for-the-digital-age/)

<comment><USER11> I really like the idea of the CEO and employee roles within ourselves. Thanks for that.

<comment><USER12> Too bad I can't fire myself.

<comment><USER13> You most certainly can. Just sit yourself down and calmly explain to yourself that, while this working arrangement has been mutually beneficial in the past, it's clear that it's not working out any more and that it's time to part ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had a conversation with Terry on freenode a couple years ago, back when TempleOS was "losethos".

I was convinced, given the context, that losethos was just computer malware, and he had a hard time articulating why it wouldn't be, and ended up just getting frustrated at the most cursory of questions.

A few days later, somebody who had witnessed the conversation informed me that he was a well known probable schizophrenic, and it really bummed me out that I didn't know or handle the situation better.

While he hasn't convinced me of anything other than that having nice uniform names for types can be helpful(U64, S64, F64, etc.), that conversation gave me some perspective on what it means to be schizophrenic.

</comment><comment><USER15> What if the giant computing platform battle of 2040 is TempleOS vs. Urbit, because everyone else got neurobricked by the iBrain/mindroid 0day of 2034?

<comment><USER16> Is Urbit a joke? I've looked at its Github repo several times over the last year or so and still have no idea.

<comment><USER17> just read the intro page

if anything you could probably find some interesting people to talk to using the chat client. heh.

on the other hand, I can make approximately zero sense of the source. or what I think might be the source.. for something...

[https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/mar/...](https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/mar/zing/door.hook)

        ::

        ::::  /hoon/core/zing/pro

    	  ::

    	/?  314

    	/-  zing

    	|_  zig=zing

    	::

    	++  grab                                                ::  convert from

    	  |%

    	  ++  noun                                              ::  convert from %noun

    		|=  src=*

    		^+  +>+

    		+>+(zig (zing src))

    	  --

    	--

<comment><USER18> ...clearly that's a content type validator.

A zing is actually just a chat message.

Take a look at the zing type definition in [https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/sur/...](https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/sur/zing/gate.hook)

        $%  [%hola p=path]
            $:  %mess  p=path
              $=  q
                $%  [%do p=@t]
                    [%exp p=@t q=tank]
                    [%say p=@t]
        ==  ==  ==

Which (ignoring the crazy syntax) is either an initialization (an %hola), an action (a %do, like /me in IRC), an embeded Hoon expression (an %exp, which is a [code output] pair), or a message (a %say). @t is just a string type.

sur/zing/gate/hook defines the type, mar/zing/core/hoon uses sur/zing/gate/hook to validate untyped data received over the network.

<comment><USER19> Of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What makes this amazing is that Linus Torvalds probably wouldn't be able to pick a random piece of code in the Linux kernel and do this.

The fact that it's quite featureful for an OS of ~100kLOC - including an assembler and compiler for a language with some OOP - makes this even more interesting. "The shell is a compiler/interpreter" concept somewhat reminds me of Lisp machines too.

<comment><USER21> I'd wager that there's 138k lines of code for which Linus _could_ drop into the code and figure out what's going on in a couple of minutes, in the same way as this; at least he could in the past. I've watched realtime conversations on IRC and in other realtime environments where he exhibits exactly this kind of comprehension of huge swaths of Linux. Linux just happens to be vastly larger than this now.

Not to dismiss this guy's impressive grasp of his chosen language and the things he's built in it; watching him using so many tools that seem to be of his own devising is impressive as hell. Downright intimidating, in fact. My lifetime software output becomes practically zero in comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This guy never ceases to amaze me, he's insanely smart and dedicated.

</comment><comment><USER23> Random numbers coming from God is cute. I'm not a theist, but I also feel awe of the elusive concept of true randomness. I read something about this from him before, and it pops up in the 1st video.

The flashing Menu button and marquee filename are _interesting_. A distraction to most people, but I wonder if they help the author Terry stay focused.

<comment><USER24> Well, if you believe in god, then random numbers must come from him, right? Even in the sense that randomness is deterministic, it's then part of fate which is ruled by whatever supreme power you would believe in. As Luke says in The Dice Man, if "not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it", then how can a die tumble without his knowing it? A die is just as pseudo-random of course, but it's nigh impossible to have a "seed" of the exact hand movement and height you use, the surface and the form of the die.

I'm an atheist, but I do find the concept of randomness being the pure will of god fascinating.

<comment><USER25> > Well, if you believe in god, then random numbers must come from him, right?

Interesting!

Personally I don't know if the second part must follow from the first, at least not for * in theists. But then I'm a theist who doesn't believe in fate, or "God knowing about something == God giving a care" or God giving a care what you had for dinner. Even the beliefs I harbor about what you _did_ have for dinner (i.e. treating your body in a specific way) have more to do with God wanting good things for man in general.

<comment><USER24> I realize I'm treading into waters of religion discussion here, but if you're a theist who refutes my statement you quoted, then you must dismiss the theory of chaos, does that follow? Since you said you don't believe in fate, I guess it does. Because if you think the theory of chaos true, that is, that everything is indeed deterministic in the sense that the world state now comes directly from the world state before, and we only think it is chaos because we can't control for all the absurd amount of variables, and if god knows everything, he sees the exact order in the chaos, and thus he knows that something as seemingly innocuous as a random number generator can have profound consequences sometimes--especially when it's used in softwares that altogether affect millions or billions of people every day.

That is, pseudonumber generation in software does indeed affect a lot of people, and then if god isn't willing it, he has by the theory of chaos absolutely no control or grasp upon the world whatsoever in the end. The alternative is that you believe that god _sometimes_ wills a random number, and most times doesn't. That would make me uncomfortable actually, but I guess that's why I don't believe in a supreme being having a will of its own, as opposed to us simply being governed by supreme principles or laws--I guess chaos is my god.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One concept I really like is to just identity map the whole address space and run everything with full priviledges. With a sufficiently high level memory safe language with good concurrency and memory regions support, you should be able to statically enforce most of the guarantees that the hardware provides and at the same time get rid of context switches. Untrusted code in a memory unsafe language would simply run in a VM.

<comment><USER27> This is how the Xerox PARC OSes and Oberon OSes families work, among a few others.

<comment><USER28> Inferno.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The world is definitely better off with Terry. Thanks man and keep on doing your thing.

</comment><comment><USER30> Neat, subscribed.

I make a point to read TempleOS' comments. Looking past the frequent nastiness they're sometimes interesting and even poetic, in a way that's as sadly familiar as the intonation in these videos.

<comment><USER31> Ditto - he's the reason I keep showdead on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> i've been through a lot of psychosis and feel like i can understand this guy. i had a psychotic break in late 2012 and thought strongly that catholicism was created to teach the world computer science concepts.

when you start reading about roko's basilisk, it's not a stretch at all to imagine that primitive human beings exposed to an artificial intelligence would think of it like 'god'.

</comment><comment><USER33> Can somebody explain in a few words what TempleOS is?

<comment><USER34> It is an operating system and associated infrastructure (editor, compiler, etc) written by one man who believes he is doing the word of god.

<comment><USER35> Must. Not. Make. RMS reference.

<comment><USER36> > Must. Not. Make. RMS reference.

Yeah because that wouldn't really make sense, considering RMS stated to be an atheist.

<comment><USER37> It does make sense. RMS himself has had his fun with this:

[https://stallman.org/saintignucius.jpg](https://stallman.org/saintignucius.jpg)

[https://stallman.org/saint.html](https://stallman.org/saint.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I actually like the idea of having to pick a random routine in a large codebase and then explaining it on the fly. Terry does a pretty good job at this, he's done similar things in other videos.

</comment><comment><USER39> I love the idea of a built-in hotkey for jumping to a random line across the entire codebase. Like a fuzzer, but for your understanding of your project.

...and now I really want to write a vimscript to do the same.

<comment> lost-theory Here's a python one-liner that will do it:

import os; import random; os.system("vim %s +%s" % (lambda f: (f, random.randint(1,len(open(f).readlines())+1)))(random.choice([f for f in sum([[os.path.join(p, f) for f in fs] for (p, ds, fs) in os.walk(".")], []) if not ".git" in f])))

<comment><USER40> That's one hell of a one-liner.

<comment><USER41> It's a great example of the trade-offs made in python (as opposed to, say, perl) design: It's not really a one-liner (yeah, it fits on one line, but it just cries out to be re-formatted) -- it's too verbose -- but the flip side is that it's actually rather readable.

<comment><USER42> Having to use lambdas just to get the syntax to allow for a one liner makes your point about reformatting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> As much as I appreciate what he did (most of us wrote a bare bones OS in school anyway), I'm not a fan of his racist comments. Some are incredibly specific like "I can't believe a nigger is the boss of a white guy, that just isn't right" or something like that. It's like he has these thoughts actually bottled up but cannot control them because of his illness. Nonetheless, my bad to rain on someone with such an illness. All the best to him.

<comment><USER44> > It's like he has these thoughts actually bottled up but cannot control them

It is not at all like he simply can't control them & would have the thoughts regardless.

That's not really how the disease works. I'm not saying you need to be a fan of his comments - but I do think he deserves a little more slack than you're giving him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> All the flashing bits and marquees... I never thought that someone could create an OS that reminds me of GeoCities

<comment><USER46> He uses <blink> tags on his site. The blinking might have some intended significance. Or maybe he just likes it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I hope medical science can one day find a way to help our friends like Terry find their way home. Until then all we can do is let him know that he is loved and respected by his peers, Terry you are one of us.

<comment><USER48> I'm sure his hellban here is really helping demonstrate that...

<comment><USER47> I think thats probably more to protect Terry from some of us then it is to protect us from Terry.

Example(I'd beat everyones ass in this thread): [http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=343...](http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3434374&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4)

<comment><USER49> How horrible.

A classic example of the fact that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence - whether verbal or physical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> "showdead -> yes" is the only reason i have a HN account.

<comment><USER5> Off topic: lately, I've noticed a lot of dead HN comments and entire shadowbanned accounts that seem totally reasonable and on-topic. I really wish there was a way to flag dead comments that were auto-flagged as false positives, because in the past HN mods have said people who comment from IPs that were previously banned also get shadowbanned.

<comment><USER51> Next time, take a look into their comment history. A lot of hellbanned people are totally reasonable on some topics but have pet topics about which they can be incredibly obnoxious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Terry is always a huge inspiration to me!

</comment><comment><USER53> I like the idea for quick impromptu presentations, so a made a script for git: [https://github.com/qznc/dot/blob/master/bin/git- randomline](https://github.com/qznc/dot/blob/master/bin/git-randomline)

$ vi $(git randomline)

Then explain to someone in five minutes

</comment><comment><USER54> Direct youtube links for those (like me) for whatever reason were unable to watch the videos directly in the page:

 _5-Minute Random Code Walk-Thru_

Episode #1: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqoJfIbPGv8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqoJfIbPGv8)

Episode #2: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuqBc5FZH2g](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuqBc5FZH2g)

Episode #3: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzlU8YywcAo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzlU8YywcAo)

Episode #4: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9ocExv4xcs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9ocExv4xcs)

Episode #5: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VlnLQOFv_g](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VlnLQOFv_g)

Episode #6: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjaHfqkxfn8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjaHfqkxfn8)

Episode #7: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxRDmfeQxpQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxRDmfeQxpQ)

Episode #8: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22goZWnhMOw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22goZWnhMOw)

Episode #9: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzkLAlYlbbo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzkLAlYlbbo)

Episode #10: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B6-pxFvcrM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B6-pxFvcrM)

Episode #11: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0MVG2e2Mco](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0MVG2e2Mco)

Episode #12: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_Qm47_EDY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_Qm47_EDY)

Episode #13: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SahDS27GdQ0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SahDS27GdQ0)

</comment><comment><USER55> A little over a year ago I wrote a post about the problems I saw in Coffeescript, Terry commented that switching to TempleOS would prevent my complaints as I could use his C variant. Made my day to have him comment.

</comment><comment><USER56> Terry is a goddamn hero and an inspiration to us all

<comment><USER47> Here here.

<comment><USER57> This is neither here nor there, but it's "Hear, hear".

<comment><USER47> I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'd just be happy for a usable Holy C. Growing up in the south, I can perhaps sadly deal with the political or racist rants. Putting that aside, I think the man is a genius who has much to offer the world. I'd love for someone like this to mentor me, though such a thing is hard to find outside academia.

</comment><comment><USER59> After looking at some of videos and intro, he is onto something with this. You can always run this in vm, I can see how permissions and ownership can get in a way. By using subroutines, he gets every ounce of juice out of his machine. Also document format, based on his description, sounds awesome.

</comment><comment><USER60> Does anyone have the code for the PRNG handy, or is familiar with it? It'd be kinda neat to see how that bit works.

<comment><USER21> It is, after all, the mind of god, which would be interesting to understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Shine on, Terry, you crazy diamond.

If nothing else, TempleOS is a testament to how much one programmer can accomplish absent feedback or collaboration from others. For better or worse.

<comment><USER62> > Shine on, Terry, you crazy diamond.

This is clearly a statement of adoration, but even still, it is anti-helpful to perpetuate the use of the word "crazy" in conversations that touch on mental health.

<comment><USER63> _Shine On_ is incredibly on-point here, since Syd Barrett himself went "crazy" to a degree and dropped out of the band. It's not a adoration of the person, it's an appreciation for Syd's inspiration or work. I'm not in Pink Floyd, but I very much like and appreciate the song.

<comment><USER64> It's more than that. This is an exact example of someone not understanding context, not using tools available to understand context, and then projecting their thoughts and beliefs onto someone else, all while completely avoidable.

If you have the means to read the comment on the internet, you also have the means to search that phrase or set of words and immediately see it's connected to a Pink Floyd song.

Even if you don't do the search, you're still projecting yourself onto their words.

"Crazy diamond" ... what makes a diamond a 'typical' diamond? Sharp/precise, clear, focused. Now let's look at 'crazy' \- typically means extremely far beyond the average/normal point. Literally 'off the charts' but in this context, mentally off the charts. To be in possession of such qualities so strong that we can't even think about how possible that is, but here we have something that demonstrates that. A person that wrote their own hobbyist kernel and OS.

Is that easy to do? Show me your custom kernel & OS. Oh, don't have one? Then how many people do you _personally_ know that have pretty much single handedly done that? Probably not that many. So you don't have a primary or secondary sources that you can speak to the dedication and depth of effort for this this task/accomplishment.

It removes power from the one actually being discussed as to encourage others to speak on _the individuals '_ behalf, thus less emphasis and power on their own self-representation and more importantly, their own voice.

I think it is a perfect description: someone who is so clear and focused in their passion and pursuit of it to the extent that we can not comprehend the effort to achieve what he single handedly did, and the clear focused and beautiful nature of what they've created, straddling between pure effort and pure art. I think it's a very humanizing thing to show that mental illness is not inherently dangerous and not inherently _bad_ and that those either showing signs or suffering are _people_ first and foremost, and we should listen to what _they_ have to say, not voices that claim to represent them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> How come his rants have a lot of racial slurs? Am I missing something? [http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Rants/TAD/2014/09/Ra...](http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Rants/TAD/2014/09/Rant140922.html)

<comment><USER66> i) perhaps he's a massive racist

ii) perhaps he has an illness that affects inhibition

It's a bit rude to just gossip about someone, especially when he reads (and posts to) HN. I always feel vaguely uncomfortable when this topic is discussed on HN.

<comment><USER67> Yeah, just skip past that stuff.

I get the sense he's just compelled to post all that -- the random "Words from God", the racist stuff... it's not necessarily anything to do with inhibitions (or lack thereof), just rules he has to follow that won't make sense to us.

I was reading a random rant and noticed a "Fuck you, God." in there, in the middle of a few pages that seemed to be almost all compelled material and almost nothing else.

I.e., maybe it pisses him off that he has to post that stuff. But he has to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Let's all hope Terry doesn't learn AI enough to equip TempleOS with the ability to learn (as well as networking). There's is no guessing as to what a randomized OS with a god-complex might do.

<comment><USER69> Your future AI overlords will program in BrainF*ck

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/17fe6q/your_ai_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/17fe6q/your_ai_overlords_will_program_in_brainfck/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> If nothing else, this guy's got staying power.

</comment><comment><USER47> What if he's right?

<comment><USER29> That God is a hypervisor? Or that religion is paravirtualization? I do know that we should be using some Ocaml/Lisp hybrid with hardware transactional memory support.

<comment><USER47> Its the matrix, and Terry Davis is Neo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Whhhaaaaat the hell? Is this real?

<comment><USER72> Yup. Terry Davis and his TempleOS are quite well known. I believe he suffers from schizophrenia although I do not know if this has been confirmed by anyone?

He is certainly a gifted programmer.

<comment><USER73> Here's some more background: [http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1buh8c/the_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1buh8c/the_creator_of_templeos_appears_in_an/)

And more still: [http://terry.davis.usesthis.com/](http://terry.davis.usesthis.com/)

<comment><USER74> Another article (annoyingly undated, but I believe ~3 years old): [http://9ol.es/LoseThos.html](http://9ol.es/LoseThos.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zero Install - <AUTHOR> http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/

<comment><USER2> That's cute, now how do i remove it? There seems to be no uninstaller.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get stock as a contractor or consultant? - <AUTHOR> I make good income contracting with startups, but startup employees at top startups will be handsomely rewarded with stock, not salaried income. How do you position the conversation to earn stock while still not being an employee? <comment><USER2> This is a very difficult sell at most startups, particularly those who have done A rounds, as it requires legal maneuvering in most cases.

If you want startup stock, I'd think "Charge biggest/most sophisticated companies a LOT of money, reinvest a portion into angel rounds." This does mean that you'll have stock from companies you didn't work for.

Note that angel investing is, for most angel investors, a fun way to lose money. (I have three small angel investments.)

An angel who invests $50k into a startup at a $5 million valuation gets a MUCH better deal than an employee who is offered 1% of the company, by the way. Ask me why if this isn't immediately obvious to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a bad idea about charging more and then just angel investing. Although then you have to be a competitive angel investor in order to get into the best deals, essentially taking on a new angel investor job in addition to consulting.

Have you successfully got stock as part of your consulting compensation and if so, why do you think you succeeded even though it's a really tough sell?

For the $50k angel investment, I'm guessing that you mean because its preferred stock with no vesting?

<comment><USER2> Never asked for stock from clients; very happy with that decision.

I wrote up the reasons for angel stock being better than employee stock on Twitter and, as I am on a phone right now, cannot conveniently paste it. Can someone please link that conversation here?

<comment><AUTHOR> According to [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about- money/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/) you are asking for ~$30k/week when consulting. I just read some of your year-in- briefs, and it seems like the most you ever made consulting was $150k in 2012. Is that correct? How much income are you making per year consulting? Because I'd want to make much more than $150k in order for it to be worth it.

The numbers I'm going through right now show that, even if I can make a lot of income consulting, if I just join the right startup I could earn stock options worth effectively more than I'd ever be able to make consulting (assuming I don't get stock consulting).

<comment><USER3> Most people who make more than 150k annually consulting do it by managing a team of consultants. An important reason we're always telling people to raise their rates is that --- unless your rates are _way_ too low --- a sole practitioner can almost never extrapolate their rate to figure out what their annual take-home will be.

<comment><USER4> I'm not so sure. Not this guy anyway. Our partnership makes quite a bit more than that, and its just us chickens doing the work. And we stay as busy as we care to. Caveat: we each have decades of expertise in our field.

<comment><USER3> Well, let's just say that I speak for my own 10+ years co-running Matasano, _plus_ Patrick (my current cofounder), _plus_ everyone I know personally who has run a contracting firm, including a few besides Patrick that also had nosebleed rates.

Generally, unless you have a team, if you're finding that you can multiply your hourly rate by 2000 and get within shouting distance of your annual gross, that means you're not charging enough.

There are a lot of good things that come from jacking your rates up, beyond just being able to make the same amount of money while doing far less work.

<comment><USER4> I must be running a public service then. We find it easy to stay 100% busy, and 2000 X rate is well north of the number this thread started with. No need to up the rate; maybe the market would support it. Working less sounds attractive though!

<comment><USER3> If you back out your hourly rate, is it within $100 of an effective hourly rate you think you could get (maybe with some hustling) as a full time engineer somewhere?

<comment><USER4> Sadly, no, I could never earn like this as an employee.

<comment><USER3> Nice. If you're billing over $2k/day, I don't get to be patronizing to you.

A pretty common strategy is to dial your rate to a point where you're consistently between 70-80% utilized, and to raise your rates some % for all new clients annually.

At a consultancy with a team of people, a utilization rate over 85% might be considered overheated, risking burning people out.

(Though if you're running a body shop you don't care about overheating).

If it was just me and a partner consulting, I'd use rates to dial utilization back to 50%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You don't. Employee options vest; there's no such thing as contractor vesting.

There is a sense in which stock compensation to a contractor is equivalent to raising cash from an investor and exchanging that cash with a contractor for services. During the first dot-com bubble, equipment vendors famously did that with startups; it allowed those vendors to book totally unrealistic sales which juiced their numbers even though they'd never see a return on the stock. It was, in effect, channel stuffing.

Today, though, a company that is willing to, in effect, raise an ad-hoc random funding round in order to get a contractor programming job done is a company whose stock is not going to be worth anything.

<comment><USER4> I've negotiated stock as part of a contracting deal (in exchange for reduced rack rate). I'm not sure why 'there's no such thing'?

<comment><USER3> Is that stock liquid now?

There are a lot of people who will trade you stock for things. I'm certainly not saying nobody will offer you stock!

<comment><USER4> Then you've lost me. I consult; I have option; they vest. It's the same stock that employees would have been vesting.

<comment><USER3> Liquid meaning, has the company sold or gone public, or is there some internal market available today that will put a cash value on them?

When did this equity compensation deal start? The most important feature of employee options vesting is the cliff; your deal was something like "if I'm still consulting for you 12 months from the start of our first statement of work, I get 1/4 of the promised options"?

How does tax treatment of those options work? Most of the reason that employees are put into a crunch period after they leave where they have to spend real money on shares is that US tax law requires employee options to expire within some number of days after the employee relationship terminates. But you're not an employee at all; how can you have employee stock options?

<comment><USER4> Ok that's the critical difference - I have warrants. Due to all the reasons you mention. They vest; they have a cliff; they expire 2 years after severing our relationship (which has never happened).

And what startup has liquid stock? I'd love to work there.

<comment><USER3> I think I'm being too elliptical. I'll be blunt: my prediction is that the overwhelming majority of startups that are willing to offer equity in exchange for contracting work are going to fail, and fail at a higher rate than other startups.

A willingness to pay in equity for consulting would to me be a red flag that the startup I was talking to was poorly managed.

<comment><USER4> I'm guilty too. To be clear: this startup tried to recruit me as CTO; I insisted on remaining in my partnership. They wanted very much to keep me invested in their idea, and warrants etc were a way of doing that. So not the usual kettle of fish.

Further I too would never consider stock _instead_ of pay for any consulting activity. That's a loser move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You may ask and decision makers quite often will be happy to grant you N worthless stock options for reduction of your today cash rate.

You may ask for an actual stock but it still won't be a fully vested grant but some conditional trickery promise.

I'd rather take maximum cash squeeze and re-invested [part of] it into some more dependable.

</comment><comment><USER6> Personally I wouldn't put a lot of effort into getting stock as a contractor/consultant. The chances of being "handsomely rewarded" in terms of future fortunes are very slim and far between. By the time you throw in the cost to exercise and the tax obligations, it may not be as much of a reward as you think.

With that said, you may be able to negotiate to reduce your hourly rate in exchange for earning a equity position. You could also work out a convertible debt type arrangement. But again, I would walk cautiously here. Having $100 today can be worth a lot more than the gamble on possibly having $1000 five years from today. Just because a company is offering employees stock does not mean that the stock will be worth anything or that the employees will be rewarded on an exit.

</comment><comment><USER7> You may be able to negotiate to be paid in stock versus $$$. Very early stage startups that have not raised a round of funding might go for that deal.

I am working on a startup that is currently bootstrap and am very open to getting work done for shares vs salaries.</comment>


Wealthfront Engineering - Hire the Best, Forget the Rest - brown9-2 http://eng.wealthfront.com/2011/07/hire-best-forget-rest.html

<comment> brown9-2 This statement threw me for a bit of a loop: _For instance, we reject any applicant who has worked for more than a year with Microsoft technologies._

<comment><AUTHOR> No kidding. Restricting candidates who worked with X technology doesn't make any sense. You can't say you're trying to hire the best engineers, while at the same time arbitrarily limiting your pool of applications based on pointless criteria.</comment></comment>


Interesting product to help people make decision - <AUTHOR> http://www.flin.gy/

<comment><USER2> cool~</comment>


The Construction of a Yurt (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/articles/yurt/ <comment><USER2> Nice Article. Also shows how informative the web could back in in 1995 when pages weren't covered in advertising junk.

After reading it, I ended up in a Google Images rabbit hole looking at different kinds of Yurts.

<comment><USER3> That is how the web is browsed best, in information explorer mode. An agent moving amongst the archives by their own impetus. A tool to satiate their thirst for stories and information.

The alternative is in consumer mode, where you sit and consume anything that shows up on the conveyor belt of feeds, wondering why things aren't as good these days.

<comment><USER4> As much as I agree, I think the internet also now has expanded to serve a different class of user, one who "wants" or "expects" to consume, vs. the earlier groups who self-selected as knowledge seekers/explorers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just going to point out here that this kind of article (detailed instructions on how to make something historical, with plenty of exploration into said history) is plentiful in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). The author was an SCA participant of many, many years.

Well worth losing an afternoon exploring.

<comment><USER6> She's still active, I see her at Pennsic.

<comment><USER5> Ah, cool. I'm no longer active; there's a handful of people in my local barony that I want to avoid, so I just bowed out altogether a few years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're into this, I recommend the classic book Shelter ([https://www.shelterpub.com/building/shelter](https://www.shelterpub.com/building/shelter)). It documents the design, construction and use of many styles of shelters around the world (including yurts).

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks really neat, thanks for sharing. Some of the photos reminded me of the Miwok bark houses on display at Yosemite:

[https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/indian- village...](https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/indian-village-of- the-ahwahnee.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My biggest complaint with plain html pages like this is that they're unpleasant to read on windscreen monitors. If you're publishing something like this, please consider adding "sakura css". It's designed to be tiny and to apply to plain html pages. They also have a bookmarklet.

[https://github.com/oxalorg/sakura](https://github.com/oxalorg/sakura)

`<link rel="stylesheet" href="[https://unpkg.com/sakura.css/css/sakura.css"](https://unpkg.com/sakura.css/css/sakura.css") type="text/css">`

<comment><USER9> You don't need to view a page in full screen mode. Considering the site still works unchanged after 23 years I am really happy they did not design it for the 1995 era screens etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are yurts as popular in the rest of the country as they are in the Pacific Northwest? They seem to be a mainstay of many campgrounds out here. Since they were designed according to the needs of the Mongolian climate, I'm wondering what it is about them that makes them suitable for the Pac NW climate.

<comment><USER11> I rarely see them in the UK, outside of festivals and the occasional hippy farmer.

<comment><USER12> Not sure which part of the UK you're in but the North of England and South of Scotland have a fair few campsites with them. They can be set up with stoves and comfortable beds so fit into the "glamping" bracket.

<comment><USER11> Ah that explains it, I'm in the south.

I've seen the glamping sites with yurts in the lake district before, but I assumed they're few and far between. Guess I was wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Short version: it is an oversized wicket barrel with an added steep roof. Pretty neat. Instead of a ring, a similar structure Can be made by interlacing wickets with the frame. Can be daubed too if you need more insulation and permanence.

This simplicity and effectiveness is why it is ancient yet still used now.

</comment><comment><USER14> My brother and his wife built a "modern" yurt from a kit sold by an Australian company.

I think it turned out nicely - [http://instagram.com/barefootyurtlife/](http://instagram.com/barefootyurtlife/)

(scroll back a bit through that IG)

<comment><USER15> How much does a house-sized one like that cost?

<comment><USER14> The kit was $50k AUD, which is the entire frame, roof, capola on top.

You can buy as little or as much of the kit as you want - i.e. siding for the outside, flooring, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if modern lightweight tent design can learn something from yurts, since they don't really seem particularly portable by comparison. (I consider a tent "portable" if it can fit in my backpack, not a pickup truck.)

<comment><USER17> They don't solve the same issues at the same scales as a backpack tent.

Primarily, yurts have to be larger. They need to accommodate entire families and their livestock in harsh winter storms. That can be keeping upwards of several dozen bodies alive in some of the worst weather on the planet. Secondly, they also have to manage the searing summer temperatures/sunlight of the southern deserts, along with incredibly high wind loads. Thirdly, they have to be repairable with the very few natural resources available in rural Mongolia.

That said, regular tents probably could learn from them. Yurts are incredibly modular and flexible designs. You can combine multiple yurts into one larger one, or use them in very different environments. They're also fairly low impact, with the primary damage to the ground being sunlight deprivation and foot traffic. I doubt the design itself could be adapted to backpacking very well though. It's just fundamentally a bit overengineered for what campers require.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Joey Hess, creator of git-annex used a Yurt for a long time, [https://joeyh.name/yurt/](https://joeyh.name/yurt/)

<comment><USER19> This made my day: "Ethernet only goes so far, so there's a repeater in the woods enclosed in Tupperware".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Obligatory link to the American version [http://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_playa](http://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_playa)

<comment><USER21> Having put up a Mongolian yurt, a Bedouin tent, and many, many hexayurts, anecdotally...

Both of the fabric yurts pack down to more convenient shapes (re: they can fit in more kinds of vehicles and spaces), particularly for the larger amount of enclosed volume. but they're much heavier. It would be a hard job to put them up solo both without tools (aka, ladders) but, I think, doable. They stay decently cool / warm inside, and are decently weather-sealed. They have many more parts and kinds of parts. Every part is completely reusable. I imagine that building one from scratch is a substantial endeavor. Has to be put away dry and is moderately involved to clean.

Hexayurts are a PITA to transpo / store (8ft x 4+ft x N inches, can't be bent, etc), but weight nothing. You can expand the design to be pretty huge on the inside, but it gets increasingly harder to put up. They're easy-ish to modify (you can re-use parts to make one of a different size) and multiple ones can very easily be assembled into larger "complexes". They have amazing isolation from the elements (when put up correctly). You can put the small ones up with minimal help, but it's hard to put the large ones up without many hands. Overall, tho, they're less work to put up. But, they also consume some materials (the tape is consumed). However, you can put together "from scratch" pretty easily, can be stored basically anywhere, and you clean it with a hose.

There's also some interesting aesthetic considerations - you can pain a hexayurt, but fabric is inherently nice; one flashlight can light up the entire interior of a yurt, etc.

If I had to live in something forever I'd go with a Mongolian yurt, but if I had to outfit a refugee camp I'd definitely go with the hexayurts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sorry to be completely ignorant here, but what is it with these sites that have absolutely zero styling?

15 years ago I would've put it down to lack of understanding how to write CSS etc. But today it's almost impossible to make a website that doesn't have at least _some_ styling (when using site builders like Squarespace, Wix, etc).

Edit: Turns out this site is from 1994 (see [http://www.pbm.com/](http://www.pbm.com/)). How are you guys finding these ancient sites? :P

<comment><USER19> I'm not your typical JS/CSS hater but for this document, I found the lack of styling perfectly fine. It also works without problems on any mobile device I tested (as expected). IMHO, not every page needs CSS and lots of breakpoints.

<comment><USER22> The text covers the full width of my 27" monitor which, while readable, is not nearly as comfortable to read as text that doesn't.

<comment><USER23> Make your browser window narrower.

<comment><USER22> That's not a valid design decision. Car seats too small? Lose weight.

Look, I realise now it's a site from 1994, I'm just astounded by the number of people that seem to think this design is still acceptable by today's standards and that I'm some sort of new-age hipster for suggesting otherwise.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>