Let's Play War: Could war games replace the real thing? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/28/2050/lets-play-war <comment><USER2> There's a classic argument against this:

" _Death. Destruction, disease, horror. That's what war is all about, Anan. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. You've made it neat and painless. So neat and painless you've had no reason to stop it._ "

— Captain Kirk, _A Taste of Armageddon_ , 1967¹

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

<comment><USER3> In a way, haven't we already done this? Our media and movies rarely depict death and grievous injury directly anymore. Everything is cut out so as to not upset or offend viewers. For example: "The War Photo No One Would Publish" [http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the- war-photo-no-one-would-publish/375762/) , and recent movies such as the Avengers, where a massive attack on New York is depicted without showing a single on-screen civilian death.

War has become a thing that takes place far away from those who vote in favor of them. Soon, thanks to drone technology, it'll become a thing that takes place far away from those who wage it as well.

Perhaps, if both sides do it remotely, it will be a good thing. A lot of technological assets will be lost, but the victory criteria will be that, rather than loss of life.

<comment><USER4> Those photos from that article are truly powerful. It's a shame that media coverage of war isn't more like that. It is brutal and disgusting, and if you are going to support it, at least look it in the face.

I'm not convinced that remote war will ever be a good thing, however. It is still fundamentally about controlling people and territory, and that comes as the cost of human lives, both civilian and enlisted.

<comment><USER5> Reminds me of reading a story about the first uncensored photographs of the aftermath of Civil War battles hitting the North. Often just a few days after the fighting. It removed some of the "charm" of war for the people who saw the results that they never really heard about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the interesting ideas from this article is how simulations can map out how a war is going to turn out _badly_ for the people who wish to engage in it, such as Vietnam. Of course, the wargamers' advice was not heeded in the case of Vietnam, but this strikes me as probably one of the best ways in how war games could "replace the real thing", because a computer simulated it, and turns out the war is a terrible idea.

This leads to the other interesting idea from Buckminster Fuller: that Earth is a (ONE) spaceship, and we need to quit acting like each nation is on a different ship...

</comment><comment><USER7> The article's section about "peace games", with its hopeful notion that if countries _really_ cooperated everything could turn out wonderful, completely misses the point that _sometimes there is no good outcome for everyone_. If resources are limited, and people are going to die without them, and there isn't enough for everyone to live on, people WILL (as individuals and/or organized groups) abandon civilized rules and engage in any means necessary to acquire what's needed to _not die_ , willing to risk death to win because they will die if they lose.

The section also conveniently avoids any discussion of the human tendency toward acquiring power over others for power's sake. ISIS is currently leading the way, literally killing anyone who does not abjectly subject to theocracy; these are not people interested in "peace games".

"Let's play war" is childish naivety about the ways of the world. That the needs of the many may outweigh the needs of the few does not mean the few will meekly accept suffering and death, as human nature is (generally) to survive at all costs.

<comment><USER8> True if that's how it happens. But in this modern post-scarcity world its ideology that causes wars, not lack of bread and milk. Look at the Kurds gassed under Sadam. The wars between Iraq and Iran - two peoples who, from safely here in American, I couldn't even tell apart - spent a generation fighting to the last man in the 80s. All over border disputes and worries about religious uprising - totally imaginary things (vs real things like food and water).

<comment><USER7> Hence my second paragraph: power for power's sake, frequent human desire to dominate others. Witness the political "progressive"'s desire to make the world a better place by unilaterally deciding how to achieve it and threatening to incarcerate (even kill) anyone who dissents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the problems is briefly touched on in the article - human ingenuity finding new ways of waging war. From the Japanese Kamikaze to more modern forms of "hybrid warfare" currently being waged by Russia in Ukraine. Western leaders don't fully appreciate quite what hybrid war is yet, so wargames can help play out ideas about it but if you don't know what your opponent is actually conceptually capable of doing it is very much in the "free game" end of the spectrum and not necessarily of any assistance.

Humans are far more complex than mere games can compute. Many WW2 strategy games have to artificially adjust forces involved in the Battle of France in 1940 because rational AI players should not be beaten by the Germans.

</comment><comment><USER10> So, how do you get people to accept the consequences of such games?

How do you explain to Japan that one of their inhabited islands belong to China now, because the Computer says so? And what do you do when it turns out the initial simulation was wrong, but since China moved half a million people over in the mean time, there's really no way to take it back any more?

<comment><USER11> The simulation wasn't wrong; the Chinese hackers clearly beat the Japanese ones in the cyberwar fought over the control of the simulation program that decided the outcome of the war. So, they won the war.

<comment><USER12> I think OP is asking about enforceability. Okay, your country loses. So what? Why must you comply with what the computer says?

<comment><USER13> My country loses. I don't like that, so I give my people guns, invade your country, and kill your people.

That's what I imagine would happen, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Answer: no.

Player one: "You lose." Player two: [shoots player one] "No I don't."

The proposition presumes all parties involved adhere to abstract rules and consent to the outcome thereof, whatever the cost. This is known as "rule of law" and "consent of the governed".

The whole _point_ of war is rejection of rules and refusing to consent thereto, or compelling other to submit thereto - both positions carried out on the premise that one's death is an acceptable risk, and killing is an acceptable means to that end.

</comment><comment><USER14> This topic comes up in one of the Culture books, Surface Detail:

[http://www.amazon.com/Surface-Detail-Culture-Iain- Banks/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Surface-Detail-Culture-Iain- Banks/dp/B007K4K8YC)

I won't spoil it but as you might imagine... There are issues. :)

<comment><USER15> I enjoyed the book. However, I have a minor complaint : even if it describes extensively virtual hells, it never mentions what determined if you went to hell or not, and for how long. Even if its a minor plot detail missing, in itself it could have been an interesting topic.

<comment><USER16> In the case of _Surface Detail_ the characters who were in Hell had chosen to go there - I thought it was reasonably clear that the other souls in Hell there were there because they were "bad" (for some suitable local definition of "bad").

<comment><USER15> That's the bad part that is bothering me. Did they replay your whole life once you died and gave you some score for each event or decision ? Who established the rules and the scoring ? Would it change with societal change in a given society ? Could you evaluate yourself at any point if your life to see if you were a "good" or "bad" person ? Could you hack the system by implanting false memory ? Or could you wipe out some embarrassing parts? You could write a book on that topic only.

<comment><USER16> I agree those are interesting questions not directly addressed by Surface Detail.

However, on a related topic the novella _A Colder War_ by Charlie Stross has a particularly creepy ending if the idea of virtual hells bothers you - the idea that an intelligent entity actually enjoys running simulations of minds and exploring the ways they can end:

 _There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know._

[http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm)

Vernor Vinge hints that transcendent Powers can sometimes do similar things with the minds of lesser entities:

 _" This innocent's ego might end up smeared across a million death cubes, running a million million simulations of human nature."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

<comment><USER18> Quoting time !

 _If there is a flaw in chess as a game of war, it is this. Unlike war, the rules of chess are constant; the pieces - unchangeable. You 'll never win the heart of a rook or the mind of a knight. They are deaf to your arguements. And so be it. The goal of a chess game is total annihilation. But in war, even as the blood beats in your ears and you race after your enemy, there is the hope that saner minds than yours will stop you before you reach your target. In war, unlike chess, rules can be changed. Truces can be called. The greatest of enemies can become the best of friends. In war there is hope._

<comment><USER19> > The goal of a chess game is total annihilation

This isn't true at all. The win condition in Chess is undeniable threat of assassination of the King. You can win without taking a single piece.

<comment><USER18> I won't argue your point. _Domination_ would be a better world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For anyone interested in this a good search term for GS is "serious games". "Simulation and Gaming" is a good journal to browse.

</comment><comment><USER21> Another related sci-fi pointer and one of my favourite books:

Stanislaw Lem's 1987 novel "Peace on Earth" ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_\(novel\)) ).

</comment><comment><USER22> It's interesting to note that the title of this article is the idea behind the esports behemoth known as "League of Legends". Players dispute wars around the fictional world by battling on a 'Rift' to decide the fate of nations. Furthermore its impressive that last years culminating Worlds match up drew in more viewers than the NBA finals [1]. This year's should be even greater.

[1][http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/12/league-of-legends-worlds- vie...](http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/12/league-of-legends-worlds-viewership- esports-world-series-nba-finals)

<comment><USER23> Actually that's been retconned. The characters within the game "League of Legends" are slowly getting their own story, in the fictional world of Runeterra. However Summoners Rift, and the League of Legends itself does not exist within the canon. There is no central battlefield where the fate of nations is decided anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> No because who will enforce the result - outwith the Culture/ Alien Space Bats

<comment><USER16> Actually, even with the Culture there was a virtual war over the Hells, with the Culture naturally being very much on the anti hell side and even that carefully managed virtual war broke out into the real when it didn't go the "right" way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Tangential, but it reminded a little of the crazy black humour novel "Year of the Angry Rabbit"

        "Wars are soon conducted as harmless arena games
        which are heavily promoted like the Olympics"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_the_Angry_Rabbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_the_Angry_Rabbit)

</comment><comment><USER26> See Cordwainer Smith's "War no 81Q" for a sci-fi exploration of this.

<comment><USER27> For those that don't know Cordwainer Smith (and maybe even some that only know him for his beautifully weird stories) in real life was Paul M. A. Linebarger, one of the pioneers of psychological warfare and wrote one of the classics in the field, "Psychological Warfare"(1948).

His father was a lawyer and activist that supported the 1911 Chinese Revolution, and had such strong connections with the revolution that Cordwainer Smith's god-father was Sun Yat-sen, the first Provisional President of the Republic of China (Jan-Mar 1912), then Premier of the Kuomintang of China (Oct 1919 - March 1925).

"As a Far East specialist [Linebarger] was involved in the formation of the Office of War Information and of the Operation Planning and Intelligence Board. He also helped organize the Army's first psychological warfare section." \- John J. Pierce, Science Fiction critic/historian

<comment><USER26> Certainly an interesting chap, as he managed all that, and then in his spare time came up with quite a number of short stories (and one novel) set along a time-line he had mapped out several millenia into the future. The stories themselves tend to centre around events and people and only illustrate the larger/longer universe incidentally.

I love it, personally, though it is all very weird and often quite funny (see "From Gustible's Planet").

<comment><USER8> His complete works fit in one fat volume. I recommend Buy it. One of the finest collections ever written.

<comment><USER26> Does said fat-volume usually contain the novel "Norstrilia" ? I had to buy that one separately.

But yes, go buy it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> See original series Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon".

</comment><comment><USER29> A better plan might be to let women decide on fighting a war or not. Or my favorite plan which is to assign the congresspeople who vote for war a spot in the front.

<comment><USER30> I quite like the idea of politician's kids fighting to the death (if over 18). In the event of a mexican standoff we start sending in friends and then increasingly distant relatives.

This would have seen George Bush Jr fighting Sadam's kids. I think it's hard to reject this idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> War generally happens when two clashing social systems are trying to occupy the same physical space. As long as the systems are tolerable to each other, then war can be replaced by a game called democracy. If they are not, then no, war cannot be replaced by a game.

<comment><USER32> Time to start playing it then! Where can I go to participate?

<comment><USER31> Most of the world. You just need to be prepared to lose quite often. As long as you don't react to losing by grabbing a gun, you're still playing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)</comment>


What Closing a Government Radio Station Would Mean for Your Clocks - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/08/25/641835302/what-closing-a-government-radio-station-would-mean-for-your-clocks <comment><USER2> I have a digital clock that I received from my mom just before she passed. It uses WWV for time/date sync. It has never drifted off time. If they shut down those stations, I will have to create my own NTP to shortwave low powered SDR unlicensed transmitter.

Does anyone already happen to have any code that will use system time to generate the audio signals and time code that would replicate WWV?

Edit: I think I found two [1] [2]

[1] - [https://github.com/ka9q/WWV](https://github.com/ka9q/WWV)

[2] - [https://github.com/micooke/wwvb_jjy](https://github.com/micooke/wwvb_jjy)

</comment><comment><USER3> How can we access the risks of turning off WWV? I know it use to be tied into all sorts of long running industrial, transportation and remote location applications. And was considered the ultimate fall back because it was so simple. Many of these uses may be even forgotten.

I remember helping to set up a LAN in the late 1980's. They had a WWV receiver with a serial interface to set network's time. I thought that was super cool. Not too many years before micro computers need to have their clocks set manually with every reboot.</comment>


An Introduction to the EMACS Editor (1978) - <AUTHOR> https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5748/AIM-447.pdf?sequence=2 <comment><USER2> "Finally, of all the people who have contributed to the development of EMACS, and the TECO behind it, special mention and appreciation go to Richard M. Stallman. Henot only gave TECO the power and generality it has, but brought together the good ideas of many different Teco-function packages, added a tremendous amount of new ideas and environment, and created EMACS. Personally, one of the joys of my avocational life has been writing Teco/EMACS functions; what makes this fun and not painful is the rich set of tools to work with, all but a few of which have an "RMS" chiseled somewhere on them."

<comment><USER3> I think RMS is an old school, a true hacker. Most things happening in tech industry today, if you go deep down, there is an RMS chiseled somewhere on something. I wish we could have him in HN, he's a very interesting person.

<comment><USER4> There must be some HN email client somewhere :)

<comment><USER5> [https://melpa.org/#/hackernews](https://melpa.org/#/hackernews)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you missed it, the tiny section on ITS has some gems:

When you connected to one of the ITs machines (even over the net) and wanted to log in, ECC suggests checking to see if anyone is logged in with the name you wanted and if not, login in with that name. Not _create an account_. "Logging in" in those days mainly set your home directory. No accounts, no passwords

The command interpreter (shell in modern parlance) was the debugger, DDT. If any program crashed you could debug in in situ rather (with all connections open, files open etc) rather than sifting through a core dump. It's ass if /bin/sh was gdb.

Those were great days in a more civilised age. You can see here where the mutability of the Lisp Machines came from.

<comment><USER7> > If you missed it, the tiny section on ITS has some gems:

I was there a few years later in the early 80s, and I wouldn't romanticize ITS. There were reasons it didn't live on.

However, one of the more hilarious inventions in the system: It used to be a pastime to try and crash a system. This was of course a huge PITA for anyone else on the system, but for whatever reason of target fixation, you couldn't stop people from trying.

So ITS had an explicit command to crash the system (KILL SYSTEM iirc), and it was well published. By removing the challenge, the system stayed up. There's some deep statement about hacker psychology in there somewhere.

Edit: Just saw your username. You weren't by any chance the same gumby from the 80s?

<comment><USER8> > Just saw your username. You weren't by any chance the same gumby from the > 80s?

Eddie Murphy on SNL? ;-)

<comment><USER6> Yes, I am the same gumby at the MIT AI lab from late 70s to mid 80s. Never saw the SNL thing though have heard about it.

<comment><USER7> > _Yes, I am the same gumby at the MIT AI lab from late 70s to mid 80s._

Apparently you have a pretty memorable username, because I don't think we ever interacted. I was a mere UROP. (I worked on a robot named TARDIS (tea and ravioli delivery service) for Jon Taft (tfat) and John [can't remember his last name], ultimately under tk. Nobody would remember me, being just a peon and then leaving to do hardware, but it was a great environment to cut your teeth, and a real privilege to have delved into LMs at that time.)

Hope things went well for you and the rest of that bunch, it was an incredible place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sometimes new IT users do not comprehend why many things exists to navigate through text since they are born in mouse/X graphics era.

Many of that trick does not have a purpose anymore but many still have, and not only for terminal usage but also for speed and comfort.

The bad part IMO is the dichotomy between "younger" and "older" users, the former would benefit a lot from many "semi-forgotten techs" but the letter need to modernize and explain things a bit or at least advertise with proper demos.

In Emacs world many things happen in this direction with newly precooked configs, new packages etc, same happen in shell land with zsh/fish and the recent "epidemic" new tool set that mostly add sugar to classic unix utilities, that's good but we need more and more.

I dream a GuixSD with Emacs as a login shell on terminal and as default desktop with EXWM and a good looking default theme, a small org-based intro vitutor style at first startup, perhaps with few video demo and many, many more users may be enlightened :-)

<comment><USER10> > Sometimes new IT users do not comprehend why many things exists to navigate > through text since they are born in mouse/X graphics era.

You're right, but the way I like to put it is: I often use text rather than moving a mouse & clicking for the same reason that human beings often use speech rather than pointing & grunting (indeed, using a mouse is a lot like pointing & grunting at one's computer).

Using a smartphone & tablet really drive home how powerful it is to have a full-featured input device (i.e., a real keyboard), rather than just a mouse- driven UI.

<comment><USER9> Oh, I will steal (and credit of course) your "pointing & grunting" comparison :D thanks!

On power I often leave some new colleagues astonished when they see how quick I am with Emacs vs with their "modern" solutions :-)

<comment><USER11> Point-and-grunt as a derogatory term for GUIs has been around for decades [1]

[1] [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/point-and-drool- interface....](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/point-and-drool- interface.html)

<comment><USER5> "Real men don't use mice" was a common saying at that time.

<comment><USER9> Not everywhere since Plan9 is really mouse-centric :-)

However I think anyone have used both keyboard centric environment, at any level, and "modern mouse usage" can say that mouse sometimes is needed (like for image editing) but for plain UI is far less needed and often not really comfortable nor efficient at all...

My only consideration is that our knowledge is mostly text, we have added video/images in the game but still text is by far predominant and mostly without any viable other option... So having a text-centric environment, without, of course, dropping graphics&c capabilities it's the most logic way of work...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shoutout to my first CS teacher who pushed EMACS on my fellow students and me. It was a pain but I'm happy about it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Funny to see that an introduction to my favorite editor... from the year I was born.

I know it is a very different beast than what I use today. Still amazing to see that some core ideas have managed to keep it ticking all of these years.

<comment><USER14> Funny to see that an introduction to my favorite editor... from the year I was -20 years old. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is fun comparing the key sequences to a modern emacs.

I looked through the section for "Basic Buffer Editing Info" and every one of the key commands mentioned there would work in a modern emacs!

You can now use fancy cursor keys rather than CTRL-P, CTRL-N but if an emacs user from 1978 was stuck in front of an emacs today then they could get straight to work :-)

The meta keys look a bit different though. You type two alt-modes (whatever they are) to get into the mini-buffer and then enter "MM-commands". In modern emacs you type Meta-x (Alt-x on most keyboards) to get into the same mode.

<comment><USER3> This is one of the reasons I prefer using old, established, principled FLOSS software as opposed to Enterprise software. I don't have to change my habits because a middle manager decided to change the product to get a promotion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a room mentioned in the document (p23): "NE43-829". Is this at MIT?

It says a manual for Macsyma exists there.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macsyma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macsyma)

"...one of the oldest general-purpose computer algebra systems which is still widely used. It was originally developed from 1968 to 1982 at MIT's Project MAC."

Is this a real room at MIT? Can someone at MIT check to see if the manual is still there? I'd like to borrow it.

<comment><USER6> That was a room on the 8th floor of tech square (almost the entire 9th floor, the top of that building, was machine room).

Tech square was an office complex built in anticipation of the space program. Then JFK was assassinated and LBJ moved mission control and all that stuff to Texas. NE43 was the name of 545 Main st. MIT had a bunch of floors, first 8&9, then 3 (CIA had the other half for a long time), then 7. I think Honeywell had an office there too, perhaps in one of the other buildings, because of the Multics project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Memories of using TECO EMACS on the TOPS-20 systems at CMU. Anybody else here?

</comment><comment><USER18> Dec teco manual in my shelf.

<comment><USER19> like this one or larger ? [http://www.bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/D...](http://www.bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-10-UTECA- A-D%20decsystem10%20Introduction%20To%20TECO%20\(Text%20Editor%20And%20Corrector\).pdf)

<comment><USER18> Looks like it's that one. I used the BSD teco port with it to re familiarize myself with the thing. Last used it on tops10 in the 1979 timeframe

<comment><USER19> Cool. I never thought of TECO as a product with a manual ..

<comment><USER18> As a George, my name did some g(lobal) operation. It was an editor more talked about than used. SOS linemode edit on tops 10 was just simpler on a decwriter or vt52. I do recall teco being quite like ed: you really have to be comfortable with an amount of text carried in your head. So..it's an editor for people with a coherent mental model. I was more incoherent.

<comment><USER19> Oh I love that side of ed. It helps my mind stay focused somehow.

<comment><USER18> Charles Forsthy at York had a macro or code hack to do .-12,.+12p-12p so you got a screen repaint about the current line.

Tecos current mark thing was pretty good actually.

<comment><USER19> hehe that was the first thing that I wanted to do, post command `,` (made me realize how vi is really visual mode for ed)

I love these old restricted programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fantastic, I wish I were born those times.

<comment><USER18> The impact of the gnu manifesto was pretty big. We talked about it, wondered when he'd get a compiler better than the PCC. I think we (leeds uni, 1980s) said years off but actually gcc 0.9? Came out far faster than I expected.

Roll forward 10-15 years. Former compiler writers out of work. Gcc and llvm killed the market. On the other hand we have really good competing duopoly of compilers and lots of upper language support and diverse languages. So.. win some lose some. And it's not like rust and go and Java have to use llvm and gcc. Rust does. Go doesn't always.

<comment><USER21> Commercial compilers are still produced - IBM with its XL C compiler, for example, and Intel's icc. Both are good. Intel's icc often produces slightly faster code than GCC. And a little back in time, SGI's MIPSPro compilers were extremely good. I'm sure there are a couple more contemporary compilers out there but the IBM and Intel compilers are something we use at work, at least.

<comment><USER22> > Commercial compilers are still produced - IBM with its XL C compiler, for > example, and Intel's icc. Both are good.

We have a few AIX machines and I've never heard anyone refer to xlC as a good compiler. It's an aging compiler with idiosyncratic linker flags/behaviour and no support for modern standards.

<comment><USER21> I have no idea what you mean by 'no support for modern standards'. It's a modern compiler for modern C (and the newest versions are compatible with code written for modern gcc, with a flag). The only thing about it is it has its own syntax for flags, which aren't exactly difficult, and they're well documented.

It produces better code than gcc in many cases. Which is exactly what you would expect for a compiler written specifically for IBM by IBM. Lots of fine- tuning options for the Power architectures.

You say you have a few AIX machines - which one, and which OS version, and which compiler versions? I'm on Power7 and Power8, with AIX 7.1 Don't look at AIX 4/5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nowadays it cannot even be fully comprehend how places like MIT, Stanford AI lab, Xerox Park research and, of course, Bell labs were islands of intelligence and sanity compared to the modern day's ocean of screaming bullshit.

''Dark liquid with negative mass'' sort of papers is what it all came to.

<comment><USER24> MIT, Stanford AI lab, Xerox Park research and Bell labs had 1978 their share of bullshit too. But today they are normally forgotten because survivorship bias let's us only remember the successful stuff, which BTW would include the bullshit if it were so successfully bad that it became memorable.

<comment><USER23> No. They never produced anything even vaguely similar to J2EE, NodeJS or PHP.

Old School things, like ML, MIT Scheme, T3 Scheme, Common Lisps and Haskell are unattainable to modern narcissistic idiots.

<comment><USER25> is it born in the wrong generation or can't stand what the new generation is doing</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shrimp Boy's Day in Court - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/shrimp-boys-day-in-court.html <comment><USER2> Follow the money.

The FBI investigation against Shrimp Boy ensnared State Senator Leland Yee and almost San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.

Leland Yee was nailed on multiple charges including gun running through Wilson Lim via the Philippines. Read the FBI indictments.

Just follow the money.

[http://sfbay.ca/2014/08/27/dentist-in-leland-yee-case- dies-i...](http://sfbay.ca/2014/08/27/dentist-in-leland-yee-case-dies-in- hospital/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting story but reading closely it seems aparent that his eagness to adopt the 'normal' sf citizen image is not only a new life he wants but also his primary legal strategy for a recent bust.

His ability to sell the fact that he is now reformed and out of the game will play a sifnificant role in whether or not he rmains free..

</comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting article - but really long, like a lot of articles these days; what is the strategy - just skim read it ?

What % of people read these long form articles all the way through.

<comment><USER5> I don't know if this is really how it is, but I feel as though "long read" articles became more common after Instapaper and Pocket, among others, came into prominence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I tried to read this article, but after a few paragraphs I still didn't know why I should care about this guy, so I stopped reading.</comment>


Insomnia: 'No link' between sleepless nights and early death - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-46223386 <comment><USER2> This seems intuitively incorrect especially if insomnia is linked "with illnesses such as dementia and depression". If they are controlling for these "confounding factors", it's highly possible that they're just eliminating the side effects of insomnia that result in an early death. It would be intuitive that someone that suffers from insomnia but suffers none of the major side effects probably wouldn't have a higher mortality rate. If they remove these controls, the results might look very different. If anyone can find the full text of the study, it'd be nice to look at.

This also flies in the face of things like Fatal Familial Insomnia and Sporadic Fatal Insomnia where patients soon die after suffering though months and months of insomnia[0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_insomnia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_insomnia)

<comment><USER3> The abstract doesn't say anything really, only that a meta analysis of existing studies reject null hypotheses that insomnia is linked to death. This isn't really that useful, and digging deeper requires looking into the details of the studies. When all those results are pooled together, it only takes one bad study to skew the meta analysis.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S108707921...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079218300741)

<comment><USER4> I think the null hypothesis is that insomnia is uncorrelated with mortality, and the meta analysis failed to reject it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Several times in my twenties I've found myself pretty depressed with no seeming way out. Generally I'd find myself with insomnia that I'd try to fight, thinking more sleep would help me break it.

At one point I stopped trying to fight the insomnia, instead just trying to stay up as long as possible. I didn't have a job at the time.

After a few days of practically no sleep but all conscious activity, I'd be playing video games or reading or whatever, I fell into a deep sleep for like 12-14 hours, and when I woke up, I felt refreshed like I'd never felt before, and my depression, well it was gone.

I believe that, just as sleep clears out some brain cruft, not sleeping can perform an inverse service that's almost as vital. The focus on "getting enough sleep" as some kind of religious mantra is keeping us from doing that.

<comment><USER6> Sleep deprivation has a well-established anti-depressant effect. Sadly it does not last, the emotional state soon returns to the baseline. The temporary reprieve could push you over the edge though, if you were close to it.

<comment><USER7> The risk is people are more likely to commit suicide when they are mildly depressed than severely depressed. In a deep depression you lack the motivation to commit suicide.

<comment><USER6> That's true, but not specific to sleep deprivation - other methods of easing depression such as SSRI also increase the likelihood of self-harm. I would imagine sports can have similar effect.

My pet theory is that there are several conditions that look like "depression", one of them is produced by the body to prevent self-harm resulting from acute anxiety. This theory has two important consequences:

1) Trying to ease certain kinds of depression via medication or other direct- action tools is likely to cause unintended side-effects (self-harm, anxiety, mania) that the depression was there to prevent.

2) The body will fight back against any direct intervention, trying to reinstate control over unbalanced psyche, e.g. building up tolerance to medication. A more fruitful approach would be to locate and eviscerate the underlying anxiety-inducing problem; the depression should then lift on its own accord.

Like I said, it's just a pet theory, but it leads itself to validation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't get too excited.

 _> But while the new report may lift concerns about an early death, it still links insomnia with illnesses such as dementia and depression, reports The Times._

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how this gels with Matthew Walker's book, which has received tons of hype this year.

<comment><USER10> Haha I actually bought that book after hearing about it in a HN thread.

<comment><USER11> Oh gosh, so did I.

<comment><USER12> I went and got it from the library. It seems, from the article, that it's entirely off-base with what his book claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone who has struggled with sleep since childhood, I've been scared stiff by popular media that every ailment known to man is going to afflict me... underperformance, won't develop muscle, won't form memories, cancer, heart attacks, ED, high blood pressure, whatever.

I've always felt fine despite sleeping 5 hours. I wonder if the bell curve of what people need is centered on 8 hours and I'm just in the left hand tail somewhere?

<comment><USER14> If it makes you feel any better in a weird way, Donald Trump supposedly sleeps only 4-5 hours a night and he's 72 years old and healthy.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/some-people-only-need-a- few-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/some-people-only-need-a-few-hours-of- sleep-2016-12)

<comment><USER15> Well, first, almost everything Donald says is a lie or an exaggeration and I doubt he sleeps 4-5 hours a night. Maybe on some nights but only he knows how much he sleeps. Second, I don't know how healthy he is, he seems like his mental faculties have declined drastically over the years. I watched some earlier Donald interviews and he was a lot more articulate and certainly seemed a whole lot more thoughtful, he was bragging less, etc. He totally lost that ability to control himself.

<comment><USER16> His Twitter timestamps lend some credence to his claims about his sleep. Not that anyone could believe he's doing anything productive in those hours.

<comment><USER15> That still doesn't tell the whole truth. If I wake up every day at 4 am, how much do i sleep?? Well, you can't tell because you have no information on when I go to sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is pretty much in direct conflict with other articles I've seen posted here.

Just a few weeks ago I had a few people telling me I was killing myself slowly by only sleeping 5.5 hours/night often times, despite not caring if it'd improve my mental performance.

<comment><USER18> HN is a den of health quackery and orthorexia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > A new report published by the journal Science Direct

This journo has no idea of how science functions. Probably thinks Google Scholar is a journal too.

</comment><comment><USER20> If sleep wasn't very, very important our bodies wouldn't prefer 7-9 hours of sleep each day.

I have a hard time believing long term sleep deprivation doesn't lead to an early death. If lack of sleep makes it harder to stay slim, increases chances of dementia and diabetes well then these issues probably help shorten the life expectancy?

I have a hard time believing this report.

</comment><comment><USER21> So night shifts cause cancer[1] but sleepless nights not an early death? Seems very unlikely.

[1] [https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320554.php](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320554.php)

<comment><USER18> Agreed; it seems very unlikely that night shifts cause cancer. Seems more likely that the people working night shifts are either (or all of the below plus):

\- more in debt than people who work day shifts (the primary cause of debt in the US is medical), and are working night shifts for the differential pay;

\- that people working night shifts are less qualified than people who work day shifts at the same salaries, lower qualifications are easy to associate with relatively lower class origins, and sickness goes up as class goes down (lack of preventative care, tougher living conditions)

\- or something as trivial as that people who work night shifts smoke more. At night, there are fewer customers and there's more time between customers. There's generally lower staffing, so both fewer coworkers to annoy with your smoke and fewer coworker conversations to distract you from your need for a cigarette. Also, poorer people smoke more.

Why does everyone assume that any correlation is causal, direct, and (a specific callout) completely unrelated to class?

<comment><USER22> Becuasw generally we are bad at probabilities at scale.

For this however, probably because of followup studies.

1) injecting mice woth cancerous cells and controlling their sleep. In sleep restricted mice it hit faster and harder

2) Sleep impairment is known to increase pathway activity that cancer uses for growth like inflammation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have a question for you folks, do you ever enjoy not going straight to sleep? I find the time when I'm laying in bed fantasizing to be very enjoyable after a hard day of reality. If I were to immediately fall asleep, I'd lose out on that hour of imagination.

<comment><USER24> No, because when my mind goes idle it tends to start dredging up past mistakes to beat me over the head with. Fortunately, since I started taking anti- anxiety meds this tends to only happen with _recent_ fuckups (so this week has been hard). My fantasizing at night tends to be a defense mechanism.

<comment><USER25> Yeah this happens to me too. What meds, if I may ask?

<comment><USER24> Venlafaxine 75mg ER

<comment><USER25> Thanks. And watch that right flank!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Im just wondering, do anyone else of you not dream? Like i literally cant remember when i last dreamt, whenever i wake up i just wake up.

Its like i skipped 6-7hours ahead during the night.

</comment><comment><USER27> And one hundred thousand people finally just got a good night's sleep...

</comment><comment><USER28> Phew.</comment>


Show HN: Have an Italian cheese farmer give you travel tips via text phone Skype - <AUTHOR> https://www.yourlocalcousin.com <comment><USER2> How does the "text 20 questions" work out? Are people paying it?

I am building an app where this would be the only logical payment method, but I haven't done any research yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks great! Too bad it didn't get more attention :(

</comment><comment><USER4> Only the locals know the best resterants.

</comment><comment><USER5> Love this idea</comment>


California's 'Workers Rights' Bill Does No Favors to Drivers or Consumers - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2019/09/13/californias-workers-rights-bill-does-no-favors-to-drivers-or-consumers/ <comment><USER2> I may not understand the bill in full, but as a CW working for a fortune 100 company for 7+ years, I find it unfair that a company of this size can use a CW for so long without hiring them. Company gets cheaper labor, but for a project or position that requires a unique skillset. Companies use to convert people to full time, not anymore when they have a cheaper resource that does the same job.

imho there is clearly a misclassification issue going on with CWs in the tech industry, and others.</comment>


Latency SLOs done right - <AUTHOR> https://www.circonus.com/2018/08/latency-slos-done-right/ <comment><USER2> I find this discussion fascinating. When I hear people advocate for SLOs (and SLIs) they are often quite rigorous in how they approach it... that is until the very last step where they hand-wave the math and produce numbers that don't mean anything (like averages of percentiles and such). Often times (specifically for sites/services that have undulating traffic volume like more users in the day than at night), the incorrect mathematics can produce wildly inaccurate outputs... so all that rigor and you end up determining that you've failed or succeeded when, in fact, the opposite is true.

I appreciate the rigor in this post because it provides clear and simple instructions on doing the last step (your calculations) correctly so that all those fancy SLOs are actually honest.</comment>


Ugh fields (things that make your mind flinch) - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/

<comment><USER2> He gives a very good bit of advice that is applicable in other contexts as well: consciously attack your problems when you're "in a motivationally 'high' state." You practice new behaviors in the "high" state and gradually push them down to lower states through practice until they're dependable reflexes. This is the only way I've ever changed a bad habit, so if you're failing with cold turkey, give this a try.

</comment><comment><USER3> Link to actual article: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Argh, I don't know how that happened. It was actually submitted here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1264738>

If an admin could update the URL to the correct one, that would be great. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is some good shit. I find that the best way to figure out what your ugh fields are is to watch for when you reward yourself out of nowhere.

I address this in my blog post on emotional intelligence, here - [http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/04/understanding-human- behav...](http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/04/understanding-human-behavior- emotional-intelligence/)

For example, as humans, we're really not as hungry or thirsty as we "think" we are. In fact, hunger impulses are often the result of conditioning, what we do when we feel some kind of emotional deficit. Take note of the surrounding circumstances behind the trigger and you can begin to trace out your blind spots.</comment>


Using Encryption and Authentication Correctly - <AUTHOR> https://paragonie.com/blog/2015/05/using-encryption-and-authentication-correctly <comment><AUTHOR> This was previously shared a few months ago, but we added a little bit more (thanks to feedback from tptacek, et al.).</comment>


A mom is breastfeeding her boyfriend – 20 years after having children - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2016/06/07/i-quit-my-job-to-breastfeed-my-bodybuilder-boyfriend-every-two-hours/ <comment><AUTHOR> i thought the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayim_Bialik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayim_Bialik) story was crazy. this is nuts.</comment>


Why Starbucks actually helps mom and pop coffeehouse - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2180301/pagenum/all/ <comment><USER2> I've always felt that Starbucks was a boon to all coffee shops because they promoted coffee culture.

I remember hanging out at coffee houses when I was a kid, but we didn't spend much, it was just a hang-out spot. Then I didn't go into a coffee shop until I was introduced to Starbucks. Though I drank at Starbucks for years, it took me a bit to realize that there is better coffee out there, but they did a GREAT job of educating the public.

I find it limiting when coffee shops target Starbucks as 'the enemy', as I wonder how many of their customers would be drinking specialty coffees if Starbucks didn't exist.

Furthermore, though I try to support local coffee shops, the concept that Starbucks coffee isn't as good, is plain wrong. I've been to a few independent coffee shops where the coffee is so bad I've thrown it out and gone to Starbucks. I've been to many more where the coffee is just on par with Starbucks, and a few standouts where the coffee is better than Starbucks.

Competition can be a good thing for customers and businesses.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree. Starbuck's legacy is that it introduced the "latte" to the general public. Thousands of businesses around the country are piggy-backing off this new found customer base of latte and frappuccino drinkers. Where was coffee consumption 20-30 years ago?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What they fail to mention is what happens to coffee shops not in "a stone's throw" from a Starbucks. I expect it's exactly the opposite. When the new Starbucks moves into town, everyone goes there... Eventually. I'm sure there's a day 1 surge of people trying the hype, then people going back to their old ways, for the most part. New customers are where the problem is. Every business has customer churn and needs as many new as old ones that are leaving, for whatever reason.

With a Starbucks too far from you, who is going to come looking for you? Only those in visual range of Starbucks are gaining from their presence, and probably only when Starbucks is too busy for their own good.

</comment><comment><USER3> Being from Seattle, I may have a bias here, but the best way to compete with Starbucks is to not to try to be like Starbucks. Starbucks is great for mom and pops because it introduced coffee to a whole new generation; coffee not just for breakfast or dessert but coffee all the time in large quantities. But as Starbucks evolves into McDonalds, this newly caffeinated generation will eventually seek out something better and that's where mom and pops can succeed.</comment>


Kotlin Multiplatform for Android and iOS - <AUTHOR> https://www.kotlindevelopment.com/kotlin-multiplatform-in-action/ <comment><USER2> In essence, JetBrains has caught up to where Xamarin was prior to the announcement of Xamarin.Forms: the ability from one solution to have separate iOS and Android UI applications with a business logic library shared between the two, all written in C# or F# (the two languages supported by the Mono compiler). The main difference is that one of the vendors actually supports the language in question (Kotlin) as a first-class citizen.

And going the other way, there's been noise for a couple years that Android apps could be written in Swift, achieving the same effect in reverse.

<comment><USER3> > The main difference is that one of the vendors actually supports the > language in question (Kotlin) as a first-class citizen.

How is this different for Xamarin? C# has first class support on Windows.

<comment><USER2> Windows isn't a mobile platform. They tried 2.5 times and have given up. In mobile it's iOS and Android, and neither Apple nor Google recognize C# as a first-class language. If you can write a compiler that emits code that LLVM can compile to ARM binary with Xcode or package your MSIL with a micro .NET VM on Android, then more power to you but Apple and Google aren't going to help you if you get stuck.

<comment><USER4> Windows tablets, laptops and 2-1 devices are quite mobile to me.

<comment><USER5> Prerty difficult to find a good dash mount, no usb charging, bit bright at night and having to plug in an external gps unit is fairly limiting though.

<comment><USER4> The car computer already takes care of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing that I still don't know about are how would things like data persistence be handled in a cross platform manner?

I recently built a kotlin Android app for work, and our architecture is tightly coupled to Android's Room database and LiveData objects. Obviously if we build it to be cross platform we wouldn't be able to use a Room database or LiveData objects on an iOS device. Would we have to roll our own persistence layer in a cross platform application? Or would we share business logic but still write a persistence layer using platform specific code?

It's not just persistence too. Any lower level API provided by the platform would still need to be written twice, right? Accessing the camera, the devices GPS location, or anything hardware related still needs an implementation for both platforms. Or would we eventually see libraries that would abstract this layer out, similar to react native?

Edit: Another thought...I haven't done much iOS development but the whole async nature of Android apps with the UI thread and background threads also seems like it would be a nightmare to deal with in a cross platform way. Does iOS involve a lot of async threads?

<comment><USER7> I'd suggest to use SQLite as a persistent storage. It's very fast, convenient and cross-platform.

<comment><USER8> Room/LiveData are abstractions over the persistent store but by default/in practice they abstract over SQLite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks great! My biggest concern and one of the reasons I'm not using Swift or C++ for a cross platform library is that most of the dependencies you (at least I need) need don't support those languages (Auth0, Firebase, Crashlytics etc...). So you end up writing more complex code to make that also work. If Kotlin native can bring those types of libraries to be supported it will be huge IMO.

<comment><USER10> Some of the firebase apis have c++ implementations: [https://firebase.google.com/docs/cpp/setup](https://firebase.google.com/docs/cpp/setup)

<comment><USER9> Yep just not the main one I need (FireStore)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a gimmick to me.

In a nutshell this has the same limitation has Xamarin.

The Business Logic is shared , but the UI Logic and the Technical Logic aren't shared or not completely.

The Xamarin community has been struggling with this issue for half a decade and they ended up re-writting their own rendering engine[0] (similar to Flutter) in C# on top of Xamarin to obtain truly MVVM Cross-Platform Framework.

My point here is very simple , getting Kotlin to run on iOS is great, but it's somewhat a waste of time because of how much time and effort it would talk to create a Runtime or Rendering Engine to normalize UI/UX on differents platforms.

[0][https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia](https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia)

<comment><USER12> The difference is that Kotlin has first class support on Android. Aside from that I agree, Kotlin is obviously second class on iOS. IMHO for simple multi- platform projects I'd use either plain webtechs or react-native. The impedance mismatch between Kotlin and Swift/ObjC is going to be an hindrance no matter what.

<comment><USER4> JavaScript is also an impedance mismatch.

<comment><USER12> > JavaScript is also an impedance mismatch.

Yet both Android and iOS allow embedding a Javascript engine in an native application with no effort whatsoever.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't call manually exporting Java methods to the WebWidget "no effort whatsover", plus the performance hit of doing cross-language, inter-process calls, in a dynamic language while the platform languages are static.

<comment><USER12> > I wouldn't call manually exporting Java methods to the WebWidget "no effort > whatsover", plus the performance hit of doing cross-language, inter-process > calls, in a dynamic language while the platform languages are static.

Well like it or not JS is first class on both platforms as they both have a JS engine at the developer's disposal, Kotlin or C# aren't.

<comment><USER4> I don't know about iOS, but on Android it surely isn't first class, the development experience is even worse than using the NDK.

If it was first class, there would be official Android APIs for JavaScript, debugging support on Android Studio, project templates on Android Studio.

Instead it is a web widget with its own little island of HTML 5/CSS 3, hardly first class.

The support is not much different than getting chromium and compiling it with the NDK.

The only mobile platforms where JavaScript is first class, alongside the other platform languages is on ChromeOS and UWP.

<comment><USER12> First class because there is no need to deploy your own JS engine on both these platforms, you can argue all you want, both have a webview/js engine API that are part of their respective SDK.

<comment><USER4> That is not what first class means.

A language is first class when the complete SDK stack tooling has support for it.

IDE, debugger, docs, project templates, profiler, OS APIs.

<comment><USER12> > That is not what first class means.

That's not what first class means to you. You can't just make up the definition you want just because it's convenient for your. First class means it runs on the platform without any form of external or third party runtime.

<comment><USER4> The point is that you want JavaScript to be seen as first class no matter what, because it fits the React Native story, even though it requires manually written FFI for the platform APIs.

Hey, by your definition even web pages are first class on mobile devices, as they don't require any form of external or third party runtime, maybe we can even call them native apps!

If JavaScript doesn't require any form of external or third party runtime, then why does React Native bundle JavaScriptCore?!?

[https://github.com/react-community/jsc-android- buildscripts](https://github.com/react-community/jsc-android-buildscripts)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, so excited for this. I would love nothing more than to be able to create Model and ViewModel code a domain specific cross platform SDK, and have a View implementation on a platform by platform basis for android, iOS, and web. Possible? I sure hope so!

</comment><comment><USER14> What is needed for more adoption is Kotlin SDK for Firebase & AWS.

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks promising!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! Still not production-ready, but we're getting there.</comment></comment>


Brad Feld: A message to graduating MBAs  - <AUTHOR> http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/19/a-message-to-graduating-mbas/ <comment><USER2> "you can always get a job that pays tons of money", "pick where you want to live", "just follow your passion, don't worry about your CV", err.. sorry but this is unrealistic for people that are not already upper-middle class and American. I'd love to set that as my priorities but I don't live in that bubble. #firstworldproblems

<comment><USER3> What's so unreasonable about any of those statements?

The city you call home dictates a lot about your life -- friends, proximity to family, potential employers, culture -- and you're in the best position to find a second home after graduating. It only gets tougher as you get older.

As for the CV, well, he's right. Don't go somewhere or do something for the sake of improving your resume, unless you want to spend the rest of your life focusing on your job application.

Finally, as for jobs that pay you plenty of money...look at his audience. They're all MBAs. High-paying jobs aren't exactly scarce for MBAs. :)

<comment><USER2> sorry but most MBAs I know are either unemployed or sub-employed, so I don't find them a high-salaried prone population as you do. You are living in a bubble where you can get a 100k job out of school, and being broke means not being able to change cars every year. I'm not saying that the values he talks about are wrong, but that they are unrealistic given the constraints of economics for 99% of the population of the world.

<comment><USER3> Sure, good point. I know a few MBAs from great state schools who are also struggling to find work.

Regardless, his point is not that "money rains from the sky" but that people should develop the life they want, irrespective of making money. Money will generally work itself out (whether its by making money off your passion, or working to support your passion as a hobby).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think graduating students, MBA or otherwise, have a hard time grasping the concept of following their passions. Rather, I think they have a hard time figuring out what their passions actually _are_.

The educational and employment system in this country has beaten relentlessly on the drum of incrementality. Everything is a box on an endless checklist. Everything is a step towards another step. No time to stop and figure out where all the steps are actually leading. Need to focus on working hard right now. So you go through life like this for 10 or 15 years, and eventually you wake up wondering how the hell you ended up nowhere near where you wanted to be. You allowed yourself to become a slave to expectations, short-term ass busting, and conventional wisdom. You may have squirreled away some decent coin in the process, but how much of that squirreling have you really enjoyed? And was it worth the price?

<comment><USER5> I rarely comment on HN, but this is incredibly wise advice. To anyone who is graduating soon and being told by everyone to "find a job, any job" listen to this man's words VERY CAREFULLY. Parse each statement individually and then contemplate the entire message.

For those of us who do not believe in an afterlife, we must realize that the opportunity costs of doing things that we don't enjoy for extended periods of time are INCREDIBLY high.

Personally, I would rather be poor with a lot of leisure time, or extremely wealthy with a lot of leisure time. I am willing to endure the transition period from one to the other (startup binge for 2-3 yrs), but with strict adherence to the PG startup methods (fail/iterate quickly) so that I am not wasting my precious time.

Life is far too short to spend completing a checklist that your parents put in front of you. Make your own goals, and follow your own passions.

The best embodiment of this philosophy is probably Elon Musk. Got rich and immediately followed his passions. He continues to inspire me to this day.

<comment><USER6> Beware, also, of arguments to the effect: "This is the way it worked for us."

Millions of young and middle-aged (and a good fraction of older) people particularly in the U.S. are getting a lesson in this right now.

"Pay your dues." In one way, there's still wisdom in this. You don't know as much as you think you know. Don't just charge off the cliff. On the other hand, if this means consistently, persistently doing less than you could, kowtowing to bores/boors who even you can see are _not part of the solution._ Well, I'll just warn you: The atrophy becomes self-perpetuating.

The trouble is, when you're young, you do have a lack of perspective. And sometimes such people are very influential, controlling figures in one's life. And emotions are deep-seated, tricky buggers once established.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For all people laugh about the French and their vacation, they understand this. Life is not about work, it is about us.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been living in Taiwan and now Beijing for almost all my adult life, but Boulder is the place I launched from. At one time I was a minor math prodigy and seriously considered a career in programming. Now that my interests are finally turning back in that direction, it's weird to realize there's such an successful guy from back in Boulder helping people do exactly what I wanted to.

I find the advice poignant, too. On one hand it feels like maybe I made the wrong choice to take the road less traveled and leave for so long.

<comment><USER9> So are you a programmer looking for a job in Boulder? We need someone in the next 2-3 mos...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good advice for those that know what their passions are. But in my experience, the hard part is in finding out exactly where their passions lie.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm graduating in less than 2 weeks. Interesting thoughts, but not really awe- inspiring or life-changing. Maybe that is THE message.

<comment><USER12> I am a little further away from graduation but it won't be long.

I am curious if you have experienced the same thing I have. I went to grad school to gain knowledge and answer a bunch of questions. While many of them have been answered, they have been replaced with exponentially more questions, many of which are even harder than the original ones in the first place.

<comment><USER13> Not all questions need to be answered. What really are the questions that drive you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In short, whatever you want to do - just do it.

</comment><comment><USER15> So very true.</comment>


Hacker Implants NFC Chip in His Hand to Bypass Security Scans and Exploit Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/04/27/implant-android-attack/ <comment><USER2> _" Such an implant doesn't get picked up at airports and so on, the amount of metal in it is far far less than wearing a watch or wedding ring."_

why not use a device embedded in a watch or wedding ring instead of injecting yourself with a piece of tech that can be obsoleted with a patch? Security personnel won't suspect such things.

<comment><USER3> Or in a simple wristband (powerbalance, etc..)

<comment><USER4> or put the NFC device in something like a barbell or ring, and pierce a part of the body where you'd normally find a piercing.

You'd always have it on you, and be able to swap it out as upgrades are required.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> NFC in Android is not active while the device is locked [0]

> Android-powered devices are usually looking for NFC tags when the screen is > unlocked, unless NFC is disabled in the device's Settings menu.

So to use this, the hacker already needs an unlocked device, in which case it's just as easy to download the payload directly.

Usually, the range for NFC to work is quite close, 4 cm or less [1], and I don't think these chips have the capability to increase the range.

[0]: [http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/n...](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/nfc.html)

[1]: [https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/...](https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/index.html)

<comment><USER6> I am able to pay with NFC on my note 3 without waking up the phone or unlocking it. [0]

[0] [https://www.tapit.ch/en](https://www.tapit.ch/en)

<comment><USER7> In the case of Tapit NFC does not communicate with the OS or the apps of the phone. NFCcommunicates directly with the SIM card and the applets installed on there. You can actually have your phone turned off and Tapit will still work. (Source: I support the Tapit team)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recorded a video that shows my hand a week or so after my installation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeIqDlaatp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeIqDlaatp0)

This was an xNT NFC tag: [https://dangerousthings.com/shop/xnt-ntag216-2x12mm- glass-ta...](https://dangerousthings.com/shop/xnt-ntag216-2x12mm-glass-tag/)

Turns out it wasn't installed too shallow, I just have thin and pale skin which makes it very visible. :) The scar did disappear completely. Still use it on my door locks and with a couple of apps on my phone.

Not sure if the antenna coil on this person's NFC chip is larger or better orientated than mine, but one thing I'll say is that it isn't that easy to get a random phone to pick it up. It took me several tries to figure out where I had to put my hand, and a few weeks before I could quickly and reliably get it to scan on the first try.

If I scan it with someone else's phone, it still takes several tries. The antenna on most phones isn't very large, and the antenna on the NFC chips are miniscule, so getting the right orientation and position isn't as easy as swiping an RFID or NFC badge.

</comment><comment><USER9> Surgery: [https://xkcd.com/644/](https://xkcd.com/644/)

</comment><comment> FLUX-YOU >A combination of pallid skin, hoody and laptop is the biggest giveaway. Such hackneyed images of hackers are, of course, evidently wrong, bordering on offensive

Damn straight it's offensive. I spent a lot of money on a suit, skimask and laptop.

<comment><USER10> >Going by hacker stereotypes, it'd be pretty easy to physically identify anyone committing an act of digital crime. A combination of pallid skin, hoody and laptop is the biggest giveaway.

Our pen-testing group has members who fit that exact stereotype. We've found that people don't care, even when acting suspicious. In fact, it gets more interesting. Awhile back we all picked up blue prison work jumpsuits from a local surplus store that say "Work Crew" on the back in faded lettering. When combined with a small red toolbox it seems prison jumpsuits are as good as a firefighters uniform for gaining access to places. I've become bold enough while wearing mine that I've openly picked locks on doors in busy offices. I haven't been caught yet & the assessment photos really hit home far more in the end-of-review report. It's pretty easy for a manager to dismiss a compromise by someone dressed as a fire fighter but not so much when its some dude in a prison jumpsuit.

<comment><USER11> I love this. You have taken pen-testing to a level of security-shaming.

<comment><USER12> Standard trick to enter a building you have no business being in: carry a large cardboard box while walking up to the door just behind someone else. Better than even money they'll hold the door open for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > A combination of pallid skin, hoody and laptop is the biggest giveaway.

Bah _(waves)_ everyone knows that _hackers_ wear business suits and balaclavas. [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=stock+photo+hacker&tbm=isc...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=stock+photo+hacker&tbm=isch)

</comment><comment><USER14> There's little research into these sort of implants, but lots of potential, IMHO.

At one point, I though about a subdermal RFID to use with an RFID door-lock. Then I realized it can trivially be copied and spoofed, so no. I'm currently considering the utility of an NFC chip which shares a vcard (vcf) to quickly share contact details. Sound doable, trivial, and somewhat useful.

<comment><USER15> I've heard that these implants also get you some piece of mind knowing that you are safe/secure. Dogs get these implants too and they look more intelligent then those who don't get to have them.

<comment><USER16> Would be amusing to program the RFID in someone's dog to open the front door though, necessitating picking up a German Shepard to hold it up to a reader. Better still make the dog a spare key and nobody would ever notice.

<comment><USER17> Cat flaps already do this...

<comment><USER18> Mhhh... I realise now that cats are the perfect NSA intrusion mecanism in fact. You can put some kitten of troy in front of the port of a hacker and your feline agent will couple and connect with the hacker laptop with a 100% of accuracy for many minutes each day. Is the perfect crime, if we think about it... they could call it, the PPP (Pretty Pink Panther) project.

<comment><USER19> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty)

<comment><USER18> 20 million spent and the cat was released and inmediately killed by a taxi?. Monty-pythonesque. Reality is always better than fiction :-)

Time to create the Rule 36 of internet?: if exists, someone will try to spy it.

<comment><USER17> These people clearly did not have any experience with cats. What does a cat do when released into a strange place? It panics and then hides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > He first had to acquire the chip, designed to be injected into cattle for > agricultural uses, from Chinese company Freevision (see images below for > their animal products and the sizeable syringe used by Wahle). But the chip, > which has just 888 bytes of memory

Something tells me that the 888 byte memory limit is intentional.

<comment><USER21> What you won't find is a chip with 444 bytes of memory. That would be a killer (not in a positive sense).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Think of all the ways you could tempt a phone user to visit a specific URL. An email, Twitter, a QR code, graffiti etc. This is just another one of those -- and not particularly easy to execute, at that.

And if I wanted to carry a URL across borders or into a secure facility I would memorise a bitly link.

<comment><USER8> Yeah. Even a QR code could be much easier to deal with. Maybe as a follow-up they'll demonstrate using a tattoo of a QR code. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> All registered dogs already need a NFC implant. Hopefully this requirement will never ever carry on to human beings - it's like 1984.

[edit: Technically the dog implants use RFID. NFC standards cover communications protocols and data exchange formats, and are based on existing radio-frequency identification (RFID) standards including ISO/IEC 14443 and FeliCa. There are several RFID frequency bands like 13.56 MHz: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio- frequency_identification#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio- frequency_identification#Frequencies) ]

<comment><AUTHOR> What country? Certainly not the US.

<comment><USER24> The EU Pet Passport, that lets Fido skip Rabies quarantine, require that he have an implanted chip.

[http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/liveanimals/pets/qanda_en.ht...](http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/liveanimals/pets/qanda_en.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've wanted to do this (implant an RFID chip, not exploit Android phones) for a while now but I can't figure out how to get it done here in Australia. Anyone have any suggestions?

<comment><USER26> It's not exactly an above-board medical procedure in the US, either. What are body modification laws like in Australia? I think most of the Americans with this sort of implant had them done by professional body piercers, which is legal in most US states (though possibly not Florida, going by the article). Of course, many piercers won't want to, and in any case they aren't licensed to use anesthesia, which you may consider a drawback.

I would say your best bet is to Google for info on how it's done and on the legality of under-skin cosmetic implants in Australia, then take your findings to local body piercers and see if you can find any willing to do it.

<comment><USER25> Thank you, I'll do as you suggest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This reminds me so much of cyberpunk fantasy and of the Panther Moderns sporting microsofts. Backstreet chip implants for enhancing hacking skills.

</comment><comment><USER28> A friend of mine did this as well. Didn't know this was cool enough to get on Forbes.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is it socially acceptable to walk around exploiting other people's devices :-)

<comment><USER30> The whole premise of social engineering is subverting what is considered socially acceptable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A friend implanted an RFID in 2005... [http://screwdecaf.cx/chipped.html](http://screwdecaf.cx/chipped.html)

I suppose the bloviating about security and Android is a twist on the story.

</comment><comment><USER32> Can somebody explain how this could possibly work in a world where strong encryption is already commonplace?

</comment><comment><USER33> > Exploit android

> It has an NFC antenna that pings Android phones, asking them to open a link.</comment>


Hacker 'handshake' hole found in common firewalls - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/041211-hacker-exploit-firewalls.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This article is based on a report release by NSS Labs titled "Network Firewall 2011 Comparative Test Results", released Q2 2011. Unfortunately the report costs USD3,500.

For more details about the attack consider reading:

The TCP Split Handshake Attack: Practical Effects on Modern Network Equipment (BreakPoint Systems, 2010) <http://nmap.org/misc/split-handshake.pdf>

<comment><USER2> From the linked paper, the 'trick' here is for the attacker to improperly respond to a tcp connection initiated from the target.

The standard handshake looks like:

Syn ->

<\- Syn / Ack

Syn ->

The 'split handshake' looks like:

Syn ->

<\- Syn

Syn / Ack ->

<\- Ack

As a result, the hypothesis is that the intermediary router could incorrectly flip the roles of client and server, and incorrectly forward untrusted packets from the outside 'client'.

<comment><USER3> I guess I don't fully understand the NSS labs attack here. In both of the scenarios laid out by Macrothink it appears that control of the server (that would be protected by the firewall) is needed for the attack to be carried out. Can an outside attacker really gain access to an otherwise blocked server this way, or is this more of a case of evading logging or IDS/IPS rules? Unless I misunderstand (which seems likely) it seems something like disabling the security cameras after you break into a bank so that they can't record you taking the money out.

Could anyone explain to a simpleton how the NSS version of the attack works using only client access?

<comment><USER4> The "server" doesn't necessarily need to be the target in an attack. The attacker would be in control of the server in this scenario, and the "client" is a machine within the targeted network. The "client" and "server" labels are only representative of who is initiating the tcp connection.

<comment><USER3> Hi! Thanks for your response. I didn't mean to get us hung up on the terminology. Let's call one machine the "Internet side" and one machine the "Protected side". I have read the Macrothink paper another time, and I still believe that you need to modify the behavior of the "Protected side" host (ie, you'd need to have prior access) before this attack would work. Is that incorrect?

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, I haven't had time to read through the paper, and only got through the first few pages. From what I see though, the point of the attack is to punch through by using the improper handling of the split handshake by a client, which apparently fools some firewalls. For this to happen, you would only need to get a client to open a tcp connection to your malicious server, which is trivial. I'll have to take a closer look at the paper later on to to give more detail though. Hopefully someone else will chime in in the meantime.

<comment><USER5> And, from the Macrothink paper, it looks like it's not so much "open an inbound connection through the firewall" as "trick the firewall into not scanning the payload". Not relevant for, say, home routers that don't do scanning in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "NSS Labs recently tested half a dozen network firewalls to evaluate security weaknesses, and all but one of them was found not to be vulnerable"

What does this say I don't even

<comment><USER5> Like much of this article, it says "I can't form a coherent sentence.".

Just change "all but one" to "only one".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I get the sense this is being hyped because of the cloak-and-dagger feeling engendered by the phrase 'hacker handshake', more than the flaw itself.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does this affect the OpenBSD packet filter (PF) at all? Should I be concerned if I am using PF as my firewall of choice?

<comment><USER9> I haven't verified PF, but it seems that it wasn't even tested. My guess is that PF is not vulnerable because PF has a pretty good understanding of how TCP works. For example, it can do SYN proxying, where PF talks to each side itself rather than just blindly forwarding things through the firewall:

"Normally when a client initiates a TCP connection to a server, PF will pass the handshake packets between the two endpoints as they arrive. PF has the ability, however, to proxy the handshake. With the handshake proxied, PF itself will complete the handshake with the client, initiate a handshake with the server, and then pass packets between the two. The benefit of this process is that no packets are sent to the server before the client completes the handshake. This eliminates the threat of spoofed TCP SYN floods affecting the server because a spoofed client connection will be unable to complete the handshake. "

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They also report that many of them fall over under fuzzing attacks

</comment><comment><USER9> Not sure I agree with the word "common". "Expensive" would be better.

Who would use security software that doesn't ship with the source code, anyway? How can you trust something that you can't even see?

<comment><USER11> You're kidding right? I've never seen a major enterprise yet that didn't use one of those brands of firewalls. Maybe Pix's and Palo Alto's are common for bootstrapped startups, but they're ubiquitous in big business networks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> And this is why I setup all my firewalled machines like they were outside my router. Just In Case.</comment>


Released my first ruby project, need some advice - <AUTHOR>

The project that I created allows people to share files using DNS. A file is pushed to an authoritative name server and can be pulled back down with a file key. If it's pulled back down from someone's normal name servers, it will (depending on DNS server settings) be cached on that name server. Subsequent pulls from that name server won't need to hit the authoritative name server for records as long as it's cached (usually TTL, sometimes not). You can find it at: http://sendtodns.github.com
I think the idea is fun, and I've been able to pull down an Ubuntu ISO using only DNS as my source. The problem is that I'm learning ruby in the process of writing this so the code is pretty ugly.
Questions
- Where do you "publish" new projects so that others can find out about them?  I was told by someone on reddit that here would be a good place, so I'm doing that now. - What are some ways I can find people to give advice?  I put a disclaimer up stating basically "Code is ugly, please fork with suggestions."
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Github baby!!</comment>


Ask HN: Should HN have a domain blacklist like Wikipedia? - <AUTHOR> I wonder if the submission quality could be raised by blacklisting certain sites. I've never seen a post of worth linking to theregister.co.uk for instance, and every TechCrunch post turns out to be nothing more than churnalism.<p>ref: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia-bans-daily-mail-as-unreliable-source-for-website <comment><USER2> 1\. To get an idea of what is automatically killed, turn on [showdead] in your profile and visit the |new| page.

2\. Most of what most sites publish is banal. Banal != banned. Find a submission from medium.com and click "(medium.com)" and at what gets submitted from there...Bloomberg, NYT, the Economist submissions are a bit more likely to be intellectually interesting but only because they have professional editors and limit what their platform publishes: nevertheless, most of their submissions are banal.

3\. TechCrunch and The Register were more important to Hacker News in its earlier days. TechCrunch reporting a startup raising $7 million was probably on the HN front page. The Register was often the earliest credible source for news about a company screwing up. These days, Topeka has a startup scene and the Orlando Sentinel has articles about Venture Capital. Both still provide quality from time to time. However, The Register's snarky style is less in keeping with the direction of Hacker News since the removal of karma counts from comments.

4\. If for no other reason than what constitutes acceptable behavior within the community, Wikipedia is probably not a good model for Hacker News.

I think the big challenge for Hacker News is not filtering out banal submissions. It's finding good submissions in the haystack and particularly when it is the diamond from a source that mostly drivels.

</comment><comment><USER3> it has such a blacklist (some domains clearly are auto-killed when submitted), but that's mostly against spam.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's up to the users. Personally I don't post anything by cnet, zdnet, medium, techcrunch, arstechnica etc

See: [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=spaceboy](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=spaceboy)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm looking at this from more of a security perspective.

Automatically block known malicious sites, but leave it up to the users and voting system to decide which sites have good articles.</comment>


Instabridge - Wi-Fi made easy - c-oreills http://www.instabridge.com/

<comment> c-oreills My initial reaction was that this was a Bad Idea security-wise, but reading into the FAQ at <http://www.instabridge.com/security> has settled my qualms a little.</comment>


Code is indeed poetry:  Van Gogh's Starry Night comes to Life - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/02/11/watch-starry-night-come-to-life-in-this-mind-blowing-interactive-animation/ <comment><USER2> This is amazing. He could easily turn this into a best-selling iPad app. Starry Night was painted in 1889, so copyright shouldn't be an issue.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, this would be very fun as in iPad app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of the Van Gogh from "Heretics of Dune" (written in 1984).

> The Ixians had been at their best in the preservation and restoration. An > observer could touch a dark spot on the lower left corner of the frame. > Immediately, you were engulfed in the true genius, not only of the artist, > but of the Ixian who had restored and preserved the work. His name was there > on the frame: Martin Buro. When touched by the human finger, the dot became > a sense projector, a benign spin-off of the technology that had produced the > Ixian Probe. Buro had restored not only the painting but the painter -- Van > Gogh's feeling -- accompaniment to each brush stroke. All had been captured > in the brush strokes, recorded there by human movements.

> Odrade had stood there engrossed through the whole performance so many times > she felt she could recreate the painting independently.

</comment><comment><USER5> One of the reasons I got into the demoscene was that I wanted so badly to make a animated versions of Escher's works, particularly Metamorphosis I-III. This is seriously an amazing work; he does honor to the original painting and goes above and beyond. Simply amazing.

<comment><USER6> Did you ever get it done? There are some animated/interactive Escher pieces on <http://wonderfl.net/tag/escher> , but no Metamorphosis - it looks difficult to animate...

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately not. I did some experimentation early on and while I got some interesting results, I wasn't ok with releasing it unless it honored the original work. Now that I've spent a couple years honing my skills, though, it may be time to revisit it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the first compelling reason I've ever seen to have a digital picture frame. Imagine just having that swirling continuously on your wall.

<comment><USER8> I think the market potential form something like this is huge, the only downside at this point is the horsepower/cost that it takes to run it. It may work fine on your phone or iPad, but I want this on my 60 inch flatscreen with x-box kinect like interaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds of looking at starry night on my acid trip. Awesome.

<comment><USER10> I was hesitant to comment about how that mimics what it would look like on mushrooms. But it is very interesting that the effects are the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember when there were things like this (maybe not quite as high quality) almost all the time on HN. :(

</comment><comment><USER12> HD download link for watching later [http://vimeo.com/moogaloop/play/clip:36466564/2661b227f53863...](http://vimeo.com/moogaloop/play/clip:36466564/2661b227f53863eb0fcd0a7b2f0919dc/1328973029/?q=hd&type=local)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the most beautiful use of art and technology I've ever seen. Potentially a whole new subclass of painting. Forget animating old images, I could imagine modern artists creating works of art only for this medium.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can see an art gallery picking this up, that would be great.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is amazing! Is he doing it with other paintings too?

</comment><comment><USER16> Impressive, did he release the app for d/l?

</comment><comment><USER17> it's really awesome. Anyone know how to achieve something like that, what's the algorithm behind it ?

</comment><comment><USER18> Code is not poetry. Products are poetry and code is a way to make products.

<comment><USER19> Really?

When Dennis Ritchie died, I saw someone post the following:

main() { printf("hello, afterworld\n"); }

There are more here: [http://hastac.org/blogs/earksiinni/2011/10/13/curious- collec...](http://hastac.org/blogs/earksiinni/2011/10/13/curious-collection- code-eulogies-honor-late-dennis-ritchie-1941-2011)

Does poetry itself not mean not being held back by any standard or pre-defined definition, and instead, seeks to challenge and/or convey an idea through sound, words, symbols, and images?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ela re Elladara twra

</comment><comment><USER21> Where can I interact with it?

</comment><comment><USER22> holy shit</comment>


Ridley Scott Says He'll Direct 'Blade Runner' Sequel - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/11/04/ridley-scott-says-he'll-direct-'blade-runner'-sequel/ <comment><USER2> Now we just have to get Philip K. Dick to write it. Oh wait.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not Russel Crowe - please not Russel Crowe</comment>


Best advice for female co-founders - <AUTHOR> Curious about what are some of the best tricks as female founders or co-founders. <comment><USER2> Talk.

Most industries have so many men that talk at shows, exhibitions etc and the organisers are dying to have more women on stage.

Building a personal brand is key to start up success as for a while, you'll be a better marketing asset than your company's name - use the fact you can get talking slots at events to your advantage.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good!</comment></comment>


Does reading this raise your chances of success? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> It ought to. Among other things, one ought to get first wind of new trends (including potential competitors) on a site like this.

<comment><USER3> It depends on how you use this site. You might've noticed how the top users tend to post articles and spark interesting discussions while new users tend to post news. As a startup founder, you are more interested in analytical articles rather than news. For news, you might be better off subscribing to other sites for a larger scope (i.e. TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOm, and KillerStartups). There is no shortage of news.

Good analytical articles, however, require that users swipe through their rss feeds, find an interesting piece, and post it here. The value of yc.news, in my opinion, is in the articles that other startup founders find interesting. And that alone makes this place worth your time.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree WRT purpose-

YC is much more useful to bring up things that you might not have thought of, or to hepl you understand the larger issues, rather then the minutiae of what's going on in 2.0 News.

One of the uses I've found is going back through the articles I've upvotted, and used that as a source of links to send to the team, so we're all on the same page about things, such as UI elements and the like..

While I get a lot out of the site individually, beign able to point to a study, or other people who have written about some of the issues is a persuasive tool, and one that helps to ensure that we have a better product all around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Piece of cake.

Ok everybody, split into to equal groups. Now, group 2, you're going to have to stop reading. Check back in a year and we'll see which group does better.

Edit: On a less snarky note... I don't see how reading different viewpoints about startups could be a bad thing.

<comment><USER6> I love you, eli! You think like me.

But one would have to pay me to join the "stop reading" group =)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Im kind of a startup person. I run a young company. Lately im reading the news here on a regular basis. Apart from being fun, i dont know if its of any use. What do you think? Did you ever learn something that had a positive impact on your business by reading stuff on the net? Is reading of any use? Or is it all about acting?

<comment><USER7> Reading and keeping up with the news is kinda odd. 99% of what you read is absolutely useless. It will never make a difference in what you do, and you'll probably never use it. However, that remaining 1% can save you *huge* amounts of time or open up massive opportunities.

Just a couple examples where procrastination has changed my life.

When I was 16, my family went shopping at the Tanger 2 supermall in Riverhead NY. I hate shopping. So, I did what I normally do: I found a bookstore, grabbed an interesting book, curled up on the floor, and read half of it by the time my parents got back. On that particular occasion, the book was "Learn Java 1.0.2 in 7 days" or some other tripe like that, the year was 1997, and the Java wave was just taking off. One book led to a second and third, and then a whole shelf full, and eventually an internship at MITRE corporation.

While on the job, I was asked to learn Perl. A couple years later, immediately after high school graduation, my math teacher's wife was starting a company and had an immediate need for some Perl programming. In the year I spent at that company, I got to experience a dot-com run exclusively by teenagers, 3 different business plans, all the tribulations of a startup, and eventually an ugly VC takeover.

While slacking off at that company because I had no work to do, I found Fanfiction.net and the Harry Potter fandom. I read a whole bunch of fics, then my workload picked up again and I promply forgot about it. I went back to it during college, and ended up joining FictionAlley.org, which was just starting at the time. Over the 4 years that I volunteered for FA, I saw it grow from 2,000 registered users to 100,000 registered users, from one machine to three, had my first experience managing teams of software developers and got to take my first major project from conception to completion.

Separate thread - at an internship after my freshman year, I was goofing off at work and reading Ward's Wiki. I ended up getting pretty involved in housekeeping there after the internship ended, and struck up a few friendships. One of them led *directly* to the startup I'm currently employed at, via a couple of internships.

Now that I'm co-founding a startup of my own, I'm finding that all the different internships and threads and so on pull together. I know what to expect in terms of growing a community. I've had experience with 2-3 different technology stacks (and found they all suck ;-), but at least that led me to one I'm reasonably happy with). I know all about scaling concerns and breaking an app out over multiple boxes. I've got some experience in judging whether a business model will fly or not. (I think our business model sucks, BTW, and really doubt it'll get us off the ground, but we've gotta start somewhere.)

All of this came, in some way or another, from procrastination.

Incidentally, running a startup seems much the same way. The vast majority of stuff you do is worthless, but the 1% that pays off really pays off big. Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing what that 1% is until you try it. People talk about how Bill Gates got lucky with the IBM deal - the thing is, Microsoft had a zillion balls in the air at the time, and if they hadn't gotten lucky with IBM they might very well have gotten lucky elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> What is your startup?

<comment><USER7> Probably the worst (= most overdone) business idea in the history of the planet: internet games + social networking. Well, second worst. Worst would probably be "Find gold in California."

Launching within a month, hopefully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading opens your mind to new things. Just because you can't see the direct effect reading has on your thoughts doesn't mean it has no effect. It gives you better perspective so you can see things from a different point of view.

Reading has different values other than perspective as well, it gives you conversation capital so you can better relate to others.

Obviously for reading to be valuable in these ways you have to read the "right things." I tend to prefer books over blogs if I'm trying to learn something specific (but blogs are great for keeping up on current events and getting different perspectives than the mainstream media), because it gives you focus and a single thing to remember. How many blog posts can you remember from a month ago?

</comment><comment><USER10> Like everything, it's a balance, right? All study and no practice is just as bad as all practice with no study. And sometimes, if you internalize something that you read, you won't often remember where you read it from, so you think you came up with it yourself.

That said, I think it's good to keep yourself in check, since we all probably are pretty voracious readers, and will keep reading, even if it's stuff we already know, just because it's a new article. My recent motto is to produce more than you consume (if it's quality stuff).

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe. But maybe the opposite of all you said is true.

Balance might be not good to be "beating the averages". Practice to the extreme might be better. How do you know that balance is better?

<comment><USER11> Not true. Practicing incessantly will make you excellent in one category. Reading, learning and continually evolving will make you better across several.

I can stick my head in the sand and keep programming PHP, but thanks to the web and reading, I have an interest in design, AJAX, and most of all Ruby on Rails. You can choose to be insanely good at one thing, or just good at several. I'll take the latter since its more flexible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Being excellent in one thing is often cited as a key factor to success. For example by Google: www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html "It's best to do one thing really, really well"

What insights do you have to proove the makers of the most successful tech startup wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Raises your chances of success? Don't leave your success to chance. Hardwork and perserverance. Sure, a lil luck wouldn't hurt, but don't count on it.

As for this site, its fun to read. Keep a critical mind though, because there simply is no magic formula, no hard and fast rules. As Morpheus might say "The rules can be bent, sometimes broken".

<comment><AUTHOR> You can start a startup without chance of failure? How many did you do so far?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reading the news from news.yc keeps me more productively in tune than any of the other places I might browse to.

</comment><comment><USER14> It doesn't lower your changes..

<comment><AUTHOR> Proof?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It raises my motivation level.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, thats the main reason, why I read too.</comment></comment>