Debian port for RISC-V 64-bit - <AUTHOR> https://people.debian.org/~mafm/posts/2017/20170422_debian-gnulinux-port-for-risc-v-64-bit-riscv64/ <comment><USER2> As someone who has followed tech for almost 40 years, I've watched a lot of things come and go. I've seen "the next big thing" go nowhere countless times while some obscure things surprised me. Well intentioned good ideas didn't make it because of external factors or they lacked enough momentum to push through developmental barriers. Having seen all of that, my assessment of RISC V is simple: If they complete the privileged spec as planned this year (and hopefully the vector extensions too) it's going to explode onto the stage like newly formed star. The ramp will appear slow to people with high hopes and unrealistic expectations, but in the context of my life it will be a sudden shift the likes of which are rarely seen.

That is IFF they get the specs finalized, and I hope they support Googles VM threads while they're at it.

<comment><USER3> The thing that has delayed Linux on RISC-V is simple enough: They keep changing and breaking ABIs. There was even one massive source break (changing #ifdef __riscv64 to __riscv) which broke several projects that I'd contributed RISC-V support to.

The reason that the Fedora port is on hold is because I'm waiting for everything to go upstream so that this sort of thing stops happening.

IMO this was entirely avoidable, and would have meant that we could have had both Fedora and Debian full RISC-V ports one or two years ago.

<comment><USER4> The way I understand it, those breakages happened because problems were found during porting. So it is kind of an egg-hen problem. Without porting problems cannot get fixed and in a stable state. Without a stable state people do not want to port things.

<comment><USER3> They could have maintained backwards compatibility (eg. by still defining #define __riscv64 as a deprecated definition), but chose not to. More of a problem is there was no real process for making the changes or informing anyone about the changes, they "just happened" and we only noticed later.

Anyway, once glibc & kernel changes are upstream, we'll have the stable ABIs we need. I'm very much hoping that upstreaming will be completed this year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Other software support status for RISC_V: [https://github.com/riscv/riscv- wiki/wiki/RISC-V-Software-Sta...](https://github.com/riscv/riscv- wiki/wiki/RISC-V-Software-Status)

</comment><comment><USER3> Fedora RISC-V port: [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/RISC-V](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/RISC-V)

</comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know of good introduction for RISC V and why I should care about it from a technical perspective?

I get the Open Source argument. And I get that x86 is full of warts and weird decisions. But does RISC learn from those mistakes and make something useable?

<comment><USER3> I think the design technically is more elegant. The instruction format is better: there are only a few formats, register numbers are always in the same place, which makes instruction decoding easier. The instruction set is also properly extensible, you can add extensions in an official way. They've avoided making lots of special-case instructions, claiming that micro-op fusion can be used to the same effect.

The financial argument is: You want to license an ARM-like chip design, without paying any license fees. Lots of companies currently license ARM and use it to make everything from embedded controllers to tablet computers. They pay ARM both a one-off license fee and per core manufactured (actually the fees are not that large in the grand scheme of chip design).

There are several RISC-V designs, which are BSD licensed, or you can make your own without any licensing fees. However if you want to call it "RISC-V" or use the logo you have to join the Foundation. If you don't want to call it "RISC-V" then the license is completely free.

Of course what's missing is the ecosystem: Linux, Android, and massive numbers of tools. That's why this announcement of the Debian on RISC-V project restarting is interesting.

(Forget about licensing an x86 design, that is basically impossible).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> RISC will change everything.

<comment><USER8> What time-scale do you envisage for actual hardware?

<comment><USER9> Linux-capable hardware will be coming out this year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some have already shipped[0], though the availability is very limited.

[0] [https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive1](https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive1)

<comment><USER3> These have very limited RAM, and won't run Linux.

<comment><USER10> 128MB Flash off-chip, and I know of several Linux distros that can run with under 50MB, so I would say it would be entirely possible to run it.

<comment><USER11> 128 MB Flash, not RAM.

Linux will run in 8 megabytes of RAM if you want. The SiFive board has 16 kilobytes.

<comment><USER10> What's to stop you connecting up an old SIMM card? The memory won't be fast, but doable.

I saw Flash as the larger limitation, as expanding that is problematic.

<comment><USER11> > What's to stop you connecting up an old SIMM card? The memory won't be fast, > but doable.

There aren't enough pins. Certainly not enough pins accesible in single-cycle reads/writes. Maybe you could multiplex them with external hardware to talk to a SIMM but you'd be talking to memory at single megahertz effectively.

An SDRAM controller in an FPGA on the other side of the QSPI link would be faster, but it'd still be slow. You could get it to work to say you've done it, but it'd run at literal-days-to-boot speeds.

The board (and chip) is meant and marketed for freetards who like Arduinos - so I bought one and so did several of my friends. LEDs were blinked and better futures dreamt of. It's cool. But it's not a workstation chip by any stretch of the imagination.

Hopefully the next version will have a real external memory bus.

<comment><USER12> I reckon it would be more in the range of minutes (depending on how complete of a linux system we are talking about here). The QSPI peripherial can run at 100MHz if I read the datasheet correctly (so you can read/write data at about 400MBit/s minus overhead). For reference booting linux on an ATmega@24MHz running an ARM emulator and external SDRAM with an memory bandwidth of about 300kbyte/s seems to take about 6 hours [1]. Assuming the SiFive is just as efficient as the ATmega it would take less than a minute (assuming the memory bandwidth is the only bottleneck and not the slow CPU - the SiFive also has 16kB of L1 cache and has a clock rate 10x faster).

[1] [http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20...](http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit)

<comment><USER11> OK, maybe it could work. I remembered that ATmega port as slower. Maybe it should be tried.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AWS console slow or not loading? - <AUTHOR> AWS console seems to be down for us.<p>https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ap-south-1.signin.aws.amazon.com <comment><USER2> Fine here us-east-1</comment>


Show HN: HN Digest - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tech.hn.digest <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HNers! This is my first post and I'd like to share a little HN reader app I created for the community. HN has been my main source of tech news and the place to go when I need some inspiration for quite some time now. What I've found particularly interesting about the HN community is the wealth of information and interesting perspectives in the comments of the various stories. Often when I read a great story, I find myself coming back to the portal searching for it and going through the comments section once again, just to refresh them in my head. This was the motivation for creating HN Digest. I wanted to be able to save stories and comments with tags, so I can find them more easily later. V1 of the app does just that. I'll be adding more features to it so please give me feedback as to what you'd like to see in the app. Thank you! PS: I'm aware there is already quite a few HN apps out there but none seems to support saving stories and comments with tags.</comment>


Owning a Car Will Soon Be as Quaint as Owning a Horse - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/opinion/end-of-cars-uber-lyft.html <comment><USER2> This article is ridiculous. Sure for urbanite hipsters who just grab a Bird scooter, but for the rest of us in the non-trendy parts of the country or who live in the suburbs, a car is absolutely essential for living a modern life. More rent-seeking to get those perpetually rent-happy Millenials I guess?

Who wants to wait for a rideshare when:

1\. We're all snowed in but mom-to-be needs medicine/insulin?

1\. Its time to go give birth...baby's here early!

1\. You have 3 children and equivalent amounts of diaper bags/soccer outfits/bookbags and the schedule between school getting out and soccer practice starting is quite close

1\. You get a call, grandpa's taken a turn for the worse, get here bc he's gonna die in <1 hr

These examples are not perfect, they are just what I could get off the top of my head, but c'mon, until we have People-Mover style monorails and/or Hyperloops everywhere, you will need a vehicle of your own control IE ownership.

To assert you can get full control over something you don't own is something I would disagree with.

<comment><USER3> Even taking that to a more 'day to day' degree:

1\. I live near the coast. I want to go surfing, but not sure where. Is my rideshare or autonomous car going to drive me around checking out different breaks to see what waves are good?

2\. How about when I get out of the water, does it keep my change of clothes with it? Many times I take a couple boards with me cause I'm not sure which board is right for the conditions. And wtf do I do with my phone? Dont tell me its waterproof cause salt water for 2hrs at a time == destroy just about anything other than fiberglass.

3\. What autonomous car is taking me camping? Sure I dont touch my car much once I'm done setting up camp, but I sure load it up and grab stuff from time to time out of it.

4\. I need some 10' 2x4s from Home Depot, some plywood and also a bunch of bags of soil. Whats my best option here?

5\. Going back to the beach thing.. how about taking my kids to the beach? That's a shitshow of a mess.. which autonomous or ride share is going to work best? Cause carseats + sand + water to rinse off + snacks + towels.. omg all the crap we bring and need to take home.

For anyone who enjoys the outdoors, the autonomous/ride share thing just isnt anywhere close. Same for anyone with kids. Same for anyone who does projects with large-ish materials (aka runs to Home Depot).

<comment><USER4> For infrequent trips like camping or picking up Home Depot stuff, you rent a large vehicle. I used to live near a Zipcar garage for these types of trips.

<comment><USER5> Home Depot already rents trucks. Although 10' stock fits in a Civic.

<comment><USER6> Home Depot, U Haul, etc. charge _by the mile_ in addition to by the day. Useless for long trips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yet people still find use in horses in rural parts of the country.

There are parts of the America, vast regions in fact, where owning a car for individual use will remain an important part of life for years to come. Electric or combustion, owning a vehicle with complete agency over it will remain a strong part of the lifestyle.

I say that as someone who is trying to ditch the car and replace it with a bike and who thinks cars should be removed from city centres so I am not at all pro-car. It is just a requirement of modern rural life to be able get yourself around long distances.

<comment><USER8> >Yet people still find use in horses in rural parts of the country.

that's why the title says "as rare as owning horses"

Many people will own cars, but not nearly as many as now.

<comment><USER7> My point was that it isn't quaint, it's practical and useful. A unique tool for a unique requirement of our modern society. Calling it quaint is showing how out of touch the author is.

Don't get me wrong. I hope she is right. I hope cars go away. But I just don't see how they could for rural citizens. Maybe part of her prediction requires that people move closer to the cities. A real possibility.

<comment><USER9> A lot of horse ownership is quaint. Just given the fact that 2/3 of the population of the US lives on 1/30th of the land area, the tiny fraction of the urban and dense-suburban population that quaintly own horses will dwarf the rural population that owns working horses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The title should really be "Owning a Car For City Dwellers Will Soon Be as Quaint as Owning a Horse". I live in a suburb in the Midwest, and taking an Uber or Lyft to work every day is simply not fiscally wise, even taking into account insurance, maintenance, and gas.

<comment><USER11> Hell, I live in a suburb in a pretty major tech hub with a 15 minute commute from work and even then it doesn't make fiscal sense to get rid of my vehicle. Commuting via rideshare just to work and back (without even taking into account the grocery trips etc that would be required without a car) would cost me about $300 a month. That's being extremely conservative, assuming no surges and minimal tipping, and assuming I do literally nothing but commute back and forth. My insurance, fuel and routine maintenance on my vehicle doing everything in my life (not just commuting to and from work, but also shopping and whatever recreational activities on weekends) is still less than that.

<comment><USER12> I agree that a renting car by the hour is not fiscally responsible, but neither is owning a car in the really long run. I do have a beautiful bikepath all the way to work, and being carless saves more than $300 per month, sure I spend it on other things, but I buy time with friends and family using that money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's nothing in there that explains how we'll get away from car ownership. In order for car ownership to be a thing of the past, we'll need a cheaper option. But what?

Wait 10 min for an uber to arrive everytime i need to go to work? Not happening in this country, that's for sure.

Flying cars will probably never arrive, the regulations won't allow it. Maybe Autonomous cars could do it, but they are another 20 to 40 years into the future: maybe then.

<comment><USER14> A car costs about $6000 per year, so about $30 per workday. That makes sense if your Uber costs about the same price, but if you can uber each way for $5, most people would be willing to wait 10 minutes to save $20.

<comment><USER15> > A car costs about $6000 per year, so about $30 per workday.

And I thought owning cars in America was comparatively cheap.

Meanwhile in Finland, 500-600 eur is enough to cover my tax & insurance. I'm coming close to 2000 eur on repairs and maintenance but I've got somewhat expensive and unusual stuff in this year's bill (like a new bumper & paint job). The rest is all gasoline. About 100 eur per refill, and that's usually enough for a month. Add up, 3800 eur. It's been by and far my most expensive year yet!

<comment><USER16> OP is dead wrong on those costs. It's extremely cheap to own a car in America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's as if the entire Midwest doesn't exist.

<comment><USER18> Or anywhere 1 hour past San Francisco. Not having a car works great when in SF but once outside you can't really have a life without it.

<comment><USER19> Actually 5 minutes if you are talking Marin County. It's pretty tricky to get places in Marin without your own vehicle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing that interests me is how there is such a vastly divergent set of opinions and relationships with vehicles even in just the HN community. When autonomous vehicles were getting a lot of press a few years ago, there were utopian articles predicting the banning of manually driven vehicles by 2025. On the other hand there are a lot of people absolutely convinced that these things are snake oil.

I can see part of the gap being location. When I lived in Philadelphia 20 years ago, I had already "cut the cord" on cars, and simply lived on public transit. I suspect many/most city residents in dense major cities have lived car free for decades.

The current optimism for leaving cars behind may be confined to suburban residents of those same cities. The density and lifestyle in those areas may be suited to these predictions. But there are a lot of parts of the country that conditions like density preclude these things, or at least make them a less valuable proposition. I live in a city of 200k. I know there is Uber here, but I've never known any person I know to use it. Cars and insurance are cheap, parking is free, and everything is spread out. The Uber proposition makes much less sense here.

But I also imagine lifestyle can have a big impact on how convenient you see the idea of Uber or the autonomous vehicle subscription fleets that have been discussed in the past. A number of other posters have brought up these things that are more problematic in shared vehicles. But if you don't repair your leaking roof yourself, you may not see the value in owning a vehicle where you can carry a few sheets of four by eight for home maintenance.

I wonder if there are other factors that influence what side of the divide you fall on. (If my comments seem like I favor the car-owners, I do, but I certainly see how non-car-owner ideal can work for some people, though not me.)

<comment><USER21> HN community, obviously, skews young, urban, and often "progressive". Quite the demographic that may not (right now!) be interested in car ownership. When I lived in Chicago, it was quite possible to live w/o a car (I still had one, because, hell, it's convenient). If you're an overpaid hipster in the SF bubble, you can absolutely do without a car, riding over little old ladies and baby strollers in a Bird or Lime scooter, and having some poor gig economy Joe Schmoe lug groceries and packages for you. And that it does not actually work for the rest of the world... well, they try not to set foot there, so why would they care.

As for people who point at China, or some European country with lower car ownership, sure, you CAN do without. And 200 years ago people did without electricity and (gasp!) computers, too. But not many people want to go back there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I mean I'm all for it, in principle, but this is about as out of touch as it gets.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have a baby. Are these cars I don't own going to have car seats?

<comment><USER4> Sure, some can, why not. Or you bring your own. When you get to the boaster seat age, it is not a big deal. If city street speeds were limited to 20 mph, would car seats be necessary? You don't need a car seat when boarding a bus.

<comment><USER24> Bring your own car seat?! And then what, carry it around all day when I get to where I'm going?

Limiting speeds to 20 mph? What? It would take way too long for anyone that doesn't live in the city center to get anywhere!

<comment><USER25> We won't need to limit speeds to 20mph, it'll happen naturally. Ride sharing substantially increases traffic--180% is the latest research.

Uber and Lyft are the worse things to happen to traffic since... cars, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The same people who are owning more and more every day are pushing and trying to convince the rest of people to do not own anything by saying that owning is a bad thing and people should move to subscription models instead of owning anything.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hello! Person living in 'fly-over country' (that vast stretch between New York and LA) here.

This idea is completely silly. Rural life (where all the food comes from) and the surrounding counties and cities aren't sustainable without cars.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't know what drugs the author took to write this headline, but I want the same!

</comment><comment><USER29> > a quaint hobby, an interesting rarity

Owning a home is a "rarity?" 67.4% (2009) of people own their own home. That's almost a super majority.

<comment><USER23> Owning a _horse_ , not a _home_.

(I misread it in the same way at first, because who expects to see "horse" there?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Spoken like someone who lives in an area where owning a horse is a luxury and doesn't serve an actual purpose.

I want to believe in things like this, but it just doesn't make sense unless you expect complete urbanization and everyone vacating rural areas.

</comment><comment><USER31> wasn't owning a horse made quaint by the fact that owning a car was far more advantageous? so what is replacing the car? even the authors own anecdote/ethos plug isn't that they cut the landline cord because they could just share a landline phone with their friends, it was because a personal cell phone was a more advanced replacement. maybe i am looking too deeply into an opinion piece from an author who thinks that their ability to predict the rise of cell phones in 1998 makes them an authority prognosticator. well him, zac morris, my fellow arrl, and anyone whose had the pleasure of cruising the citizen's band.

</comment><comment><USER32> _Car-sharing continues to increase (Uber and Lyft are set to go public this year)_

I don't see how these two fit the definition of "sharing".

To me they were always just "taxis but with a tax-dodgy flavour".

</comment><comment><USER33> I do not understand the bitterness on both sides. Yes, people will still find ways to need a car, it just happens like that. Not everyone lives the same life or are in the same geographical location. People still find uses for horses. On the other side, people find ways to not have cars. Just because you need one everyday doesn't mean my single friend Bill who lives downtown NYC needs one too. Everybody has their life, let them live it the way they want to.

</comment><comment><USER34> * for well-off individuals in a major metropolitan area.

</comment><comment><USER35> Delusional.

<comment><USER36> Somebody is having an IPO and hired a PR firm...

<comment><USER37> This was EXACTLY my thought, but Kara is generally a respected journalist. Does she own shares in either Uber/Lyft?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm holding out for the Cowboy Bebop future. Sure the Moon might have exploded and everyone on Earth forced underground, but personal transport will be basically a cheap ship with military-grade weapons and ability to escape the atmosphere and the planet's gravity under its own power.

</comment><comment><USER39> Seriously, nothing can beat the convience of owning a car.

</comment><comment><USER26> Car sharing will grow up more and more as people are getting used to not owning stuff.

</comment><comment><USER40> > one of the next major secular trends in tech

Secular trends? What the heck does that mean?

<comment><USER9> A secular trend is roughly any trend that is not either a fad or cyclical.

Basically the claim is that opting out of car-ownership will be a sticky long- term movement, not just something that urban hipsters do for a few years to signal how green they are.

\- Ice cream demand going up every summer is a cyclical trend.

\- Bell bottoms were a fad.

\- Smartphones replacing dumbphones is a secular trend.

<comment><USER40> Thanks, haven't heard that before

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> no it will not</comment>


Ask HN: Which search engines do you use to do exhaustive research on the web? - <AUTHOR> I have to do extensive research on a number of potential variations of a product that I want to build and market. I will have to be searching for physical products, companies, research papers and news publications that refer to those things.
With the Google Search service being so dissapointingly degraded and returning so much noise and limited results it's almost impossible to try and dig in all that garbage it returns without losing your sanity.
Scholar still works well enough, so searching for papers won't be that hard, but I really need some advice from people who do this often (patent office workers? Market researchers? Inventors and entrepreneurs?) because this difficulty to discover new information relevant to a subject is making my life very difficult. <comment><USER2> For general technical and commercial background of the area I would recommend Library Genesis with a wide range of related search terms, including to be exhaustive those in other major languages. You can seed the search query set from relevant Wikipedia topics, book publishing information page listed keywords, dewey decimal categories, or other mature collaborative semantic databases. Using these established semantic databases helps to ensure you don't miss category specific jargon thus undermining your results.

However, arguably the most important element of hardware products from a research perspective is the marketplace state with respect to competition and demand patterns. For this area, I recommend: (1) [https://patents.google.com/](https://patents.google.com/) (relevant results of which can also be used to seed/re-seed keywords for the above). The amount of information people put in patents is ridiculous, you can shortcut a lot of wasted effort by learning from their mistakes. (2) Existing consumer product databases such as eBay, Amazon, or Etsy. (3) Searching Taobao in Chinese for both the product category (machine translate adequate) and the major functional components. This reveals a true state of costs and supply chain outside of any tightly held specialist manufacturing lines, which is often deeply informative with respect to product design decisions and explaining marketplace state. (4) Researching specific competitors: funding, timeline, team, location, announced marketing and business strategy. Job ads will also give you huge insight in to their skill gaps and technical stack / strategy. (5) Using google trends to identify search volume changes over time within your target market(s).

Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm working on this! [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/)

Histre aims to help with the whole "knowledge funnel", if you will. My approach for the web search part of it is to heavily penalize (to varying degrees) websites with ads, tracking, referral links etc.

The web search part isn't done yet. You don't have an email address in your HN profile. So if you'd either drop me an email or signup to Histre, I'll let you know when this is ready.

An additional note re Histre: I find that all the knowledge base apps out there are "write only". Search sucks in all of them. What's the point of creating and maintaining KBs if you can't use it later? So I'm solving search first. Another way Histre stands out (I believe) is that, it strives to solve the upkeep problem, by making it trivial to keep your knowledge bases up to date.

</comment><comment> caleb-allen Google Scholar mostly.

Sometimes I'll find myself using search from a publisher or library when seeking specific physical document.

That said, I've had the desire for a more robust document search engine many times. A bit ironic..

</comment><comment><USER4> searx? [https://persagen.com/2020/02/02/searx.html](https://persagen.com/2020/02/02/searx.html)

I've been using it for a couple of weeks and I am quite happy with it.

Per your comments, I think anything that does a metasearch (not relying on a single search engine -- Google ...) [Dogpile? ...] will offer benefits.

<comment><USER5> That's actually very interesting. Thanks for sharing. :)

~a ddg user

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://millionshort.com/](https://millionshort.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Search Hacker News: [https://hn.algolia.com/](https://hn.algolia.com/)</comment>


Facebook's mental health problem - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@katikrause/facebook-s-mental-health-problem-9c48374c1bd8#.b26037nu2 <comment><USER2> This narrative seems to keep popping up. Depression is not Facebook's problem any more than it is Budweiser's problem, or Ben & Jerry's problem. People who suffer from depression have unhealthy relationships with a myriad of things because it distorts your worldview.

IMO, this is more a case of social media bringing deeper problems to the surface than social media being the actual cause.

<comment><USER3> > more a case of social media bringing deeper problems to the surface than > social media being the actual cause

I think its a combination of both. You draw a parallel between social networks and budweiser. Alcohol worsens depression and I believe social networks do as well. Whether or not they CAUSE depression is a totally different matter of course.

> depression... distorts your worldview

I think this should be up for debate as well. Even though I've echoed this sentiment myself, as someone with depression I'm starting to suspect that my own is brought on due to a very accurate understanding of the world. I've been painfully aware of my own and my family's place in the world (lower-middle- class) since I was a kid. My own and my family's mortality is another thing that makes me extremely depressed if I allow myself to think too deeply about it. Wars, world injustices, the ultimate meaninglessness of life... I've been thinking about all of this since I was around 5 years old. That's not a distorted worldview, its reality.

I think a lot of my own depression stems from the inability to block out all of the negative things in my life. Once I started meditating, stopped following the news so closely, got rid of my repressive religion, stopped letting lack of funds ruin my day (partially by blocking out all advertising), deleted my social networks and got into an excellent sleep routine I've been able to manage my depression and I feel a lot better.

<comment><USER4> I think rather than being a "very accurate understanding of the world", it might be characterized as a "very acute understanding of the world without pleasurable inputs." At least that is the way I perceive my own feelings (I am a fellow sufferer).

Sleep and "news deprivation" have both been very helpful to me as well, as has meditation.

<comment> J-dawg Thank you for this comment.

> very acute understanding of the world without pleasurable inputs.

This sums it up perfectly. It's also what makes depression so dangerous. When you're at your lowest point you don't feel like you have a distorted worldview at all. You feel like you're seeing the world perfectly clearly. Of course, you're actually not. You're blocking out all the wonderful stuff that actually makes life worth living.

Blocking out news and advertising wherever possible has helped me too. And yes, this included quitting Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have noticed a pretty strong trend among my friends on Facebook: many are active users through their 20s, then they hit 30 and it's radio silence except for wedding / baby photos. My news feed is also nearly 50% advertisements at this point. This has led me personally to disengage with Facebook, and I feel many of my friends have done the same. If I were more isolated or vulnerable though and craving a human connection, it could seem as if all my friends were abandoning me.

I wonder to what extent Facebook's advertising algorithms (which dilute the content/ad ratio of news feed items) are capable of driving depression. If their algorithms are bumping posts from friends in favor of ads, your news feed feels more "cold". I'm guessing that at least a small percentage of Facebook's users are unaware that the news feed is generated by an algorithm, and that your friends may be saying / sharing things that are not shown to you.

Are Facebook's algorithms capable of influencing the happiness of its users? I don't have a good answer for that, but it does seem plausible.

<comment> J-dawg I experienced the exact same thing as I got into my 30s, as well as a huge increase in posts appearing in my newsfeed just because a friend 'liked' it. So I'm suddenly seeing the wedding and baby photos of people I've never even met. It just felt creepy and weird, like I was intruding on people's private moments.

I think this is because, as you say, people maintain radio silence apart from major life events. When someone posts one of these major events, everyone else feels like they _have_ to hit 'like' out of a sense of loyalty, which propagates these posts much further across the graph. These are the only type of posts I've seen that routinely get 100+ likes.

I actually think this could be a factor in the downfall of FB, as it develops its own social norms (e.g. "I must always 'like' any photo of a female hand with an engagement ring on it, despite the fact it looks identical to every other one"). The number of likes a post receives is now completely divorced (pun intended) from the inherent quality of the post, so the like button no longer works as an upvote system.

<comment><USER5> > so the like button no longer works as an upvote system.

I don't think it ever worked as an upvote system. I think that many users have that expectation, but Facebook has never really used "likes" alone to determine news feed placement.

But I agree, I think this social phenomenon combined with ad blockers (which effectively block Facebook's data feed into what sites users visit outside of Facebook) will lead to significant downward revenue pressure on Facebook. There's not really anything competitive yet; but advertising doesn't feel like a viable model long-term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The World Health Organisation estimates there are 350 million people > suffering from depression globally, and that by 2020 it will be the second > most widespread disease in the world.

>This is shoddy statistics, but: 350 million people is one quarter of Facebook's global user base.

Admitting that you're using shoddy statistics doesn't somehow excuse it. You can draw absolutely zero conclusions from those two data.

<comment><USER7> Exactly.

(Though technically, you _can_ conclude that at least 75% of Facebook's global user base is _not_ suffering from depression.)

<comment><USER8> No you cannot. If being a Facebook user is highly correlated with being depressed, the figure could be considerably lower. See Simpson's paradox. If you take a subset of a dataset, you can find the opposite trend or a completely different mean compared to the whole population. This is because the subset can have particular features causing it to be not representative of the whole population.

<comment><USER9> Can you elaborate? It seems like simple logic, if 300 million people out of the total population of humans have depression and Facebook has 1200 million users. Then at least 75% of its user base must not be depressed. Because if any more then 75% were depressed then there would be more then 300 million people with depression.

<comment><USER10> I doubt this is what the parent comment was suggesting, but...

~10% profiles are fakes/bots

x% are duplicates

x% are created as business profiles

FB has more fake profile than 186 out of 196 countries actually have people, in fact all but the top 10 countries by population. Therefore, more than 75% of FB users (distinct from profiles) could suffer from depression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who got rid of facebook in 2013 and has not gone back:

I may not have scientific evidence but I think alot of us could say it feels like an addiction, and even is something we don't want to do but do anyways, it makes us less happy but we still do it, it distracts us from work but we still do it, it robs of of intimacy but we still do it. I don't know about scientific research but that sounds like an addiction to me. THAT, is why social media is dangerous.

Do you have goals in life? Is social media effecting your goals and the people around you? Then limit it or get it out of your life.

I also think it plays into depression for a lot of people because:

1\. People cherry pick what they want to share so you are not getting an accurate representation, and thus youre comparing all of your life, the cherry picked and non cherry picked to theirs, which will inevitably lead to dissapointment. They will show their photos of their trip to France but not that they fight almost every night or have not done their dishes in a week. They will post pictures of sushi but not how eating out all the time is racking up their credit card debt. Maybe you should stay at home and save money and maybe they are destroying their financial lives, but yet you still feel inadequate for not having as exciting of a life? That doesn't sound healthy..

2\. It's a stalking website for insecure people and people who do not have the courage to engage or care enough to maintain a real relationships but want to keep tabs on you. Why would someone who never interacts with you in real life want to keep tabs on you? Try to that answer that quesion. Does it lead to anything good?

Now ask yourself why do YOU need it? Do to those same things to other people? To feel better about yourself? Why do you have so many selfies? Who are you trying to impress? What are you trying to prove to other people? What are you trying to prove to yourself?

I'll admit when fb first came out it was fun, before relatives and employers and ads came onto it. It was a way to get invited to college parties and wake up the next morning and laugh with your roomies as you scroll through pics and remember what happened the night before. It was NOT about relationship pain, being forced to announce to the whole world when something happens to you or you break up, hating other people and ways to engage in infidelity, or bragging about how many tens of thousands of dollars you spent on your wedding photographer, but lets be honest with ourselves, now it is.

SOME ANECDOTAL STUFF:

For some people its reddit. my ex boyfriend was so addicted to reddit we could be in the middle of a crisis, or on one such occasion I was discussing the pros and cons of a long distance job that would require one of us moving or living apart and thus him doubling his rent expenses, things I would assume he would be inherently interested in and he was browsing reddit on his phone the whole time. its like, nothing was more important than reddit. Sometimes its just about maturity and respect. He would stay up late at night and complain about not getting sleep because he couldn't stop browsing reddit.

It even affected our intimate life. I'm not a controlling girlfriend, and I respect if other people have different opinions or boundaries for what is ok with their boyfriends to do or not do, but I didn't really care he looked at porn. But over time amateur stuff on reddit became an obsession and anytime I did not feel comfortable doing something he would try to say well other girls do it on here. Well I'm not them.

How am I supposed to beat the collective satisfaction of the entire internet or even compete with it? There will always be a prettier, more successful girl with better photoshopped selfies and a shorter skirt on facebook you are friends with, than me. There will always be a girl on the internet willing to do something in bed I'm not willing to do. So accept me for who I am or get over it and move on. (The long end to that story is I did have to dump him because this kind of stuff ended up destroying our relationship and now he is incredibly depressed and I get emails from him about how its "eating him away inside" regarding the state of our relationship when it ended. Yup, thats right social media distorted his ability to properly value what was standing right in front of him and as a result he lost what really mattered to him, wow, sounds like an addiction to me.)

But the truth is with that attitude nothing will ever satisfy you, so the more you do it, the more of a drug it is the more you need it the more it's never enough, the more the person your dating seems somehow subpar to the collective standards of all the other people you browse or look at or are "friends" with on facebook while forgetting that as individuals all of those people have flaws and limitations and after a year of living with them will probably dissapoint you in some ways as well, and the less the people around you in your real life will be able to satisfy you.

I got rid of facebook in 2013 after I broke up with my ex, because everyone in our friends group didn't want to talk to either of us about how we were doing or help, they just wanted to see when we would change our relationships status so they could talk about us behind our back. The second I did guys that had not spoken to me in months or years were suddenly texting me like hey whats up. Really?

That's when I realized the people who actually care about you don't need your facebook profile. People who need your facebook profile are people who want to talk poorly of you and compare you to other people and judge you and keep track of when you can be of use to them, relationship wise or otherwise. What a pointless network it's devolved into.

Since I got rid of facebook the week we broke up, my life has gotten so much better. I'm focused on MY life, not anyone elses, and when I accomplish something its for ME. I don't have anywhere to post it or brag about it so you have to ask yourself what really motivates you in life? If impressing other people has anything to do with it then social media is probably going to aid in that toxic thought process you have an influence your behavior in a way that may ultimately be harmful to you.

My real friends which is maybe 5 or 6, some who live across the country still remember to call me on my birthday even though fb does not remind them. People I was not that close to or I didn't think I would ever be friends with stepped up and really reached out to me and helped me get through a hard time, people i least expected and they are not toxic or gossipy and they are not checking my facebook to laugh about me behind my back.

If a guy or really anyone at all ever wants to get to know me, he has to actually walk up to me and start a conversation, or is going to meet me through mutual friends, REAL friends, not friends scheming to hook people up on facebook, and before the conversation he doesnt kno w 1\. how old i am where i went to school who i am dating who im friends with what i looked like on my summer vacation last year...

so all of my relationships friendships or otherwise feel much more organic and it weeds out people who can use information about you to manipulate you or mirror your interests fakely to get close to you.

<comment><USER12> > I'll admit when fb first came out it was fun, before relatives and employers > and ads came onto it. It was a way to get invited to college parties and > wake up the next morning and laugh with your roomies as you scroll through > pics and remember what happened the night before. It was NOT about > relationship pain, being forced to announce to the whole world when > something happens to you or you break up, hating other people and ways to > engage in infidelity, or bragging about how many tens <snip>

Yep, this paragraph nails it. It all became serious business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great. There is a fundamental problem with social media: There is no self growth. It is all about researching other people. You end up learning more about others and nothing about yourself. A feedback loop back towards your self growth is missing

<comment><USER14> I wonder if "encouraging self growth" is a slightly more actionable design goal for social media sites than "embracing the messiness of human life", whatever that's supposed to mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "That I wasn't able to perform for social media anymore. I used to go through life mentally composing tweets and spotting photo opportunities for Instagram. That was unthinkable now. The mere thought caused so much anxiety that I could barely unclench my jaws."

Yeah that's called addiction. Sweet Christ people actually do that? I post on Facebook very occasionally and it's usually bitching about something relating to code or just posting a picture of something cool. I don't even invest enough in this stuff to call it "composing" without feeling a little weird saying that.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there a decent open decentralised alternative to using facebook events. Maybe something pump.io based?

That part of facebook contributes value to my life - I'd quite happily ditch the rest of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't read the article as I'm too busy at the moment, but I keep seeing these types of posts pop up on HN and thought it might be worth throwing in my 0.02.

I've long quietly suffered from depression. I didn't bother to make this known to friends or family. I didn't want people to think of or treat me differently. I didn't want to go on medication and knew if I revealed my suicidal thoughts that people would look at me differently and probably force me to go on medication.

Several years ago I went through some really rough experiences -- divorce, loss of religion, family shunning, all at the same time. This hit me incredibly hard, but I buried my depression in constant recreation, work and alcohol. That's not to say I became or am an alcoholic - I'm not. I go for months without touching the stuff sometimes... but I began frequenting bars for a while on a near nightly basis.

Several years prior to that I also caved and started using social networks - twitter, facebook and instagram. Eventually my depression won out and started to show through. I couldn't stop complaining about everything in real life, but more so on social networks.

When I hit peak depression I felt like I was also losing my mind... and it showed in my facebook / twitter posts. As I feared my friends started viewing me differently. I got dumped by my GF because of my depression and inability to seek help (this was made known to me on her exit). That caused me to go on medication and then things got really bad.

The shit the doctor put me on had me thinking really crazy and I made plans to kill myself, which I obviously backed out of (not a ghost lol).

Eventually I went off the pills and got my head strait and I recently got a fulltime job and have been living with a new wonderful GF who understands depression for a couple of years now.

One of the biggest things that helped was near complete seclusion -- I noticed that the pressure (and worse - feedback) on facebook was crushing me. Often I would get mocked or would draw the ire of some of my "friends" for some of my crazy / emphatic posts. Rather than trying to understand me or help, these people turned on me. Interestingly these were people I know in real life (I had a rule that I would only friend people who I considered real life friends). When I deleted my facebook account for the first time, I gave warning and got at least one "good riddance". These were from adults in their 30s by the way.

Instagram was no better. I kept it around for way too long. I would get almost no likes on my photos or the same mocking comments (from different people than the FB posts). Then my "friends" started following my girlfriend and would like her photos, but would skip mine over, or they would like photos I posted of her art but would ignore my work. That could have been completely innocent and coincidental of course, but in my depressed state it felt like a judgment of myself.

I ended up deleting everything -- fb, twitter, instagram, gmail, yahoo, my phone number... i left it all behind and after a couple of months have felt like my old self.

I know this is all anecdotal, and its possibly a coincidence that my depression became more manageable after dumping all my accounts. I also know that social networks didn't CAUSE the depression, but they absolutely kept me locked in my head and in a moment in time that I need to move past. Deleting them seems to have helped and I have no intention of going back.

</comment><comment><USER17> Here's a nice social experiment: what would happen if all users were required to post their bank balance along with their status updates? All those nice vacation pictures have to be financed _somehow_...

By the way, I just unfollow all of my friends by default, so I don't have to read their status updates when I just want to check out some events.

</comment><comment><USER18> I know many may not think SUZE ORMAN is right on everything but she used to always say "People who feel less than spend more than". Facebook may be thinking the same things as this would help their advertisers.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Which begs the question: Have the researchers ever actually used Facebook?

I take it from tone that the author expected an obvious point to hit home here. It completely flew over my head. Anyone else pick up on it?

<comment><USER20> > _Stalk acquaintances and compare your life to theirs, and bang, here comes > depression. Dotingly check on your friends and family, and you'll be happy._

My best guess is that Facebook's interface and presentation can encourage one over the other. It's biased to show success stories, so I'd say it is more leaning towards the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The same can happen with many things on the internet. Reddit, Youtube etc. It's not specific to facebook.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's more Twitter than Facebook for me, but same problem.</comment>


Show HN: I made a tutorial for a basic web scraper with sms notifications - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-to-build-a-simple-search-bot-in-30-minutes-eb56fcedcdb1 <comment><AUTHOR> I was frustrated with the lack of responses from my apartment hunt, so I built a web scraper that deals with finding new posts in certain searches for me

[https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-to-build-a-simple- search...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-to-build-a-simple-search-bot- in-30-minutes-eb56fcedcdb1)

For those who don't care about the tutorial -> open source repo here -> [https://github.com/quinnlangille/pad- patrol](https://github.com/quinnlangille/pad-patrol)

feel free to fork, clone or contribute :~)

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks good thanks for sharing, you could also use an anonymous scraping API to scale your scraper up if you are crawling on high volumes for instance using this node package. [https://www.npmjs.com/package/proxycrawl](https://www.npmjs.com/package/proxycrawl)</comment>


Why shaken, not stirred? - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaken,_not_stirred#Why_shaken.2C_not_stirred.3F

<comment><USER2> As a self confessed Martini nut I can tell you two things, one of whom was told to me by Allesandro, head barman at the Duke's Hotel, London where they have a special Vesper Martini that's as close to the original as you can get.

In the old days people didn't mix vodka and gin in cocktails as they were much stronger than they are now. In Casino Royale Bond acts a particularly flashy, arrogant show-off type gambler. In the early 50s when the novel is set (although please do bear in mind that the story was heavily influenced by wartime events in the Naval Intelligence Division) people never mixed Gin and Vodka in a Martini, and a Martini was always stirred with a special spoon to avoid chipping the ice.

Bond, being the flashy type ordered his Martini with Vodka, which would then need to be shaken in order to avoid the oilyness that came with the potato- based vodkas of the time as per the wikipedia article. The act of it being shaken would've aroused much interest from people who would have asked what the gentleman was drinking, to which the response would seem incredible in a kind of 'who does this guy think he is' type of way. The casino is supposed to be a high brow csaino that will have seen better days, Bond was breaking etiquette to show off how big his balls were and to attract Le Chiffre's attention.

The other thing on a more technical point is that a modern vesper cannot be made with the same ingredients as the original (as the formulas have changed). In order to get something close you need a strong but fairly easy drinking vodka (at least 43% ABV), a neutral Gin as close to 53% as possible, Lillet Blanc (a white vermouth) and either a tincture of quinine or a dash of orange bitters. My personal recommendation would be for Berry Bros No. 3 Dry London Gin, Potocki Vodka, Lillet Blanc and Orange Angostura Bitters. Stirring takes longer to cool the drink down to the right temperature (around 1-3 degrees C), whereas shaking takes considerably less time, but you'll get ice particles in the resulting drink. As the drink cools more water melts into the drink, diluting the cocktail. Thus a shaken Martini is generally slightly stronger than a stirred one. The oxygenation of the mix also gives the drink a sharpness that you don't get in a stirred martini, but most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

The TL;DR for all of this is, vespers should be shaken and not stirred, or poured and layered (as per the Duke's bar), no other martini should be shaken - unless it's pure Gin and Vermouth in which case it can be gently shaken to waltz time.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to see the results of a blind taste test by persons who swear it would make a difference to the taste.

I have my suspicions of what the outcome would be.

<comment><USER4> I drink manhattans, which are like martinis made with burbon (or more traditionally, rye), and I can certainly taste the difference between shaken vs. stirred. shaken ones have a foam on them and taste muddled, rather than crisp. I don't like specifying stirred when I order my drink because I think it comes off as a bit pretentious, but when I see the bartender pulling the shaker up above their shoulder, I'll usually stop him and quietly ask him to please stir it instead.

<comment><USER2> Actually a proper Manhattan is nothing like a modern Gin/Vodka Martini or a classical 20th century Martini, but is similar in some respects to a Perfect Martini due to the addition of sweet vermouth or the traditional Martinez, believed to be made with sweet vermouth.

Having said that, I do like the odd Rob Roy. Some places shake deliberately to get the froth as Manhattans tend to have a signature twist in posher places. I think you're right to ask to stir instead for a classic Manhattan (especially if you're using Canadian Club or Crown Royal).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Best to avoid any connection with ice altogether by keeping your spirits in the freezer.

There is nothing more dispiriting that paying over the odds for a cocktail and watching the ghastly wannabe shaking it for half-an-hour with slush so he can fill a 'large glass' with basically water.

Stir or shake is then a matter of choice as to how opalescent you want your drink.

At hypernumbers we only serve cocktails from Schumann's American bar: <http://astore.amazon.com/hypernumbersc-20/detail/1558598537>

In particular I would recommend a Claridge, stirred and not shaken.

If you are a sloshed geek you might find this engineering schematic of cocktails amusing as well: <http://www.scribd.com/doc/27580670/Engineers- Guide-to-Drinks>

<comment><USER2> Really? I've never read American bar although I heard it leaves a lot of common drinks out on the grounds that Schumann didn't like them. I'd also find it strange that you'd limit yourself to drinks prepared for a mock-American bar in Munich.

If you're going to limit what you do, doesn't it makes more sense to limit the menu to IBA cocktails? (I don't know, never ran a bar, know a few who do though).

Also why the Claridge recommendation? Any particular reason? I'm interested to know.

<comment><USER5> > it leaves a lot of common drinks out on the grounds that Schumann didn't > like them

Given that most 'cocktails' I have ever been served in bars are basically 'alcohol disguised as fruit juice' leaving them out is not a bad thing. Essentially if a cocktail has a name like a porn film, don't drink it.

Given that he ran the Cocktail Bar at the Ritz in Paris I think "drinks prepared for a mock-American bar in Munich" is a tad snippy. We Europeans have been drinking strong drinks for a long time.

I recommend Claridges because I like them. Drink of champions.

<comment><USER2> You're right about my comment, it was a bit snippy. Even so, I find your reference to porno cocktails both understandable and snobbish at the same time. Every time someone asks me to mix them a sex on the beach I die a little inside. In fact I get that with mojitos (if they ask for Bacardi) and Margheritas (with Jose Cuervo) too, so I can't exactly exclude myself from the snobbish end.

Europeans I find don't have the monopoly on strong drinks - the Russians have been outdoing the whole of Europe (including us Brits and Irish) on the mad booze stakes for a while!

Fair enough that you recommend Claridges - I'll have to give it a try. Is it acceptable to use Cointreau instead of something like Grand Marnier for this, or does it have to be a specific triple sec?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I particularly like Fleming being prescribed _bourbon_ to cut back on his gin consumption.

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of Nick Charles from the movie _The Thin Man_ : "The important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz time." :-)

<comment><USER2> That's precisely where I got the waltz thing from. Good find!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For the TV trivia inclined, there is an episode of West Wing (Stirred Season 3 #18) where the President lectures on it saying JB is ordering a weak drink.

Take with grain of salt, as the series also reports some stories like the whole "NASA Pen/USSR Pencil" story as fact. Fiction tis fiction.

<comment><USER2> This is definitely ficticious. In the Duke's they'll only serve you two Vespers because of the strength of the drink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> i had thought it was a manifestation of James Bond's personality: assuming the ingredients were mixed on the spot, a stirred drink would have a uniform flavor, while a shaken drink would have a more erratic 'spontaneous' flavor</comment>


Pregnant at 10 and abortion's not an option - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34195973 <comment><USER2> That have very simple solution - a charity flies the girls out of the country to a first class healthcare facility and they get the abortion they need.</comment>


GitHub Enterprise 2.9 is here - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2326-github-enterprise-2-9-is-here-with-pull-request-improvements-organization-wide-projects-and-google-cloud-platform-support <comment><USER2> > Starting conversations around code is what Pull Requests and the GitHub Flow > are all about. These feature enhancements make that collaboration even more > efficient.

When did "Git Flow" become "GitHub Flow"?

Separately, anybody who's used both GitHub Enterprise and GitLab CE that they'd hands down prefer GHE? GitLab CE isn't perfect but it's so far along that the hassle of paying for something (i.e. either GitHub or GitLab enterprise versions) doesn't seem like it'd be worth any incremental improvement in product.

<comment><USER3> Git Flow and GitHub Flow are actually distinct from each other. Here's a blog post about it from Scott Chacon.

[http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github- flow.html](http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github-flow.html)</comment></comment>


Jungle – Simple CLI for AWS operations - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/achiku/jungle

<comment><AUTHOR> awscli is by far the most comprehensive CLI tool manipulating various AWS services, and I really like its flexible options and up-to-date release cycle. However, day-to-day AWS operations from my terminal don't need that much flexibility and that many services. Rather, I wanted just small set of UNIX- like commands which are easy to use and remember. So I wrote this small Python package.

If you are interested, please let me hear what you think!

<comment><USER2> I really like this, i use the AWS cli daily, and its syntax and options are very comprehensive, but not so user friendly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let me hear how it fits to your daily operation!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As most people have already said awscli is awesome and very complete; and I like awscli. The commands can get pretty long and when you have to look at the help doc every time to see what arguments you're missing it can get tedious. So Thanks for creating this!

<comment><USER4> If you aren't already aware, the recent versions of awscli have started accepting the full JSON payloads, which I realize seems like it's worse but in my experience one usually interacts with a few common cases and leaving the JSON around for editing is both a great reminder and saves a bunch of keystrokes.

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/generate- cli...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/generate-cli- skeleton.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know awscli is trying to use skelton JSON to save keystrokes, and it certainly helps a lot of adhoc operations to be done quickly without spending precious cognitive load. I use JSON parameter template in my shell script, but feel like it is not for "command line tool". It is just my feeling, but still hard to neglect since I'm really used to UNIX-like command line tool.

<comment><USER4> Oh, yes, I hope my comment didn't come across as "you can replace jungle with a ton of JSON"; I was trying to speak to the comment by @rem7 about trying to remember all the crazy syntax of the command line.

I haven't tried jungle yet, but I am glad it exists and I thank you for open sourcing it to improve our aws experience, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! reporting issues and pr are all welcomed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for introducing me to boto3. Being able to write compact and powerful stuff like:

print [i.console_output()['Output'] for i in boto3.resource('ec2').instances.filter(Filters=[{'Name': 'tag:Name', 'Values': ['frontend17']}])][0]

...is pretty awsesome!

<comment><AUTHOR> I love boto, but when I filed the issue and received the answer from a committer, I decided to move to boto3. I can understand the situation but, boto seems to be be strictly backward compatible. So let's move on to boto3 and have nice Resource API with all AWS services.

[https://github.com/boto/boto/pull/3186](https://github.com/boto/boto/pull/3186)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's like you knew what I wanted before I wanted it. This is great. I hated saving long "commands" for every operation I wanted to do. I will definitely check this out and use this!

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment! Yeah, I hear you. awscli is really awesome tool, but when it comes to day-to-day/adhoc operations, it doesn't do well like Unix tools. And that is exactly why I wrote this!

<comment><USER7> I wrote a similar tool for Digital Ocean a couple of years ago, for the same reasons! Improving CLI UX is shooting fish in a barrel, few designers seem to care about the non-web experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, right. Quick and dirty CLI experience is a bit different from fancy GUI!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great idea and great execution. SSH by instance ID is a tool I need right now but never found the time to build. I'll give jungle a spin!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment! It really helps me to keep moving on! If you find any issue or space for improvement, please let me know, since the software is just borned a couple days ago!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Couldn't this or 90% of this be done using bash aliases? Is there project like that out there? So you don't have to install all the dependencies, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, you are right. It is perfectly possible to wrap awscli by shell script and do exactly the same thing with what this tool does. However, generally speaking, it will be more and more difficult to test and maintain as a tool becomes large, especially if it's written in shell script. Python has awesome testing library (I love py.test), and the most importantly, has really cool AWS mock library moto ([https://github.com/spulec/moto](https://github.com/spulec/moto)). These are pretty much why I picked Python, rather than bash alias or shell script for this tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice! Can it use profiles from credentials file or just the default?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I thinks you can use profile since all the settings related to credential are based on boto3.

[http://boto3.readthedocs.org/en/latest/guide/quickstart.html...](http://boto3.readthedocs.org/en/latest/guide/quickstart.html#configuration)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> good job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Mr. CEO!</comment></comment>


Why I Quit Being a Therapist [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0Fi32LbXHA <comment><USER2> Key points from the video:

1) People mostly benefit from having someone to talk to about their problems. Drugs apparently aren't much help.

2) People with the most trauma are the ones that have the least finances to pay for treatments.

3) Most trauma is from early life.

4) The therapist has no support from colleagues and cannot talk openly. When someone mentions suicide its recommended to send the person straight to the hospital and to be medicated (Video author does not agree).

5) The responsibility is too much, hearing the horrors and being on the minds of the harmed person.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the summary, as it's the only way I'd have heard this person's view. 1) paints a broad and inaccurate view unless there is more specificity about what kind of medication is being discussed. 4) & 5) are well taken, though; where do professionals with confidentiality restrictions get help, each other?

<comment><USER2> He didn't really discuss what kind of medication.

My interpretation is he feels medication is pushed too much and rarely solves the problem. He mentioned how people wanted to taper off and eventually stop taking prescription medication. He didn't like how he isn't allowed to help with that area.

Also he voiced how the cost difference for someone staying in the hospital as an impatient is very high compared to seeing him. Insurance will try to prevent patients from seeing him 3 days per week and only want once a week (even if 3 days is helpful). Insurance companies have every detail about a patient and demand it without respecting privacy.

<comment><USER4> Happy to see you clarified your take on point one. While summaries are helpful, it's playing the telephone game on interpretation. It's better to view the source material whenever possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something interesting is making a mental "disorder" a sickness. A mental trait becomes a disorder when this trait no more compatible with social norms ( it breaks the order of things, hence disorder ). Hence the pain. And we assume a pain is a sickness that can be cured, medicated.

Medication do not solve the root of the pain. Our brain is more than a chemical balance. It's a neural network, trained on the training set of our childhood. There is this fundamental age around 6-7 years old where the child creates its identity picture, its definition of self, which becomes the blueprint of its personality trait and evolution. This blueprint causes what psychoanalysts call "neurosis". When digging into it, there are so many things that makes sense in the field of psychoanalysis, and the parallels with neurosciences and even AI are staggering.

Little nuggets I found enlightening in my day to day perception of life :

\- We learn language and the meaning of things from others ( our parents usually ). As a consequence, we naturally expect truth and meaning to come from outside. That's why we look for confirmation from others. That's why we expect the people we fall in love with to give our life meaning.

\- We create our identities based on our environment. We define ourselves against the others as to define is to draw a boundary, a difference. That's why you'll often see the cliché in family where if the elder's dominant trait/definition is to be good at school, then the second child will take the opposite route.

\- Our neurosis is mostly our limiting factor to approach life. This is what we fight against everyday, this is the wall between what we can be and what we are.

I understand this can be seen as a controversial view for many.

I'm no psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, but was raised in a psychiatrist / psychoanalyst family. A weird but enriching experience.

<comment><USER6> > Medication do not solve the root of the pain.

Contradictory anecdata: Therapy never helped me until after I started taking venlafaxine (generic Effexor) which took away my anhedonia and made it possible to process my trauma productively, rather than continuing to wallow in misery and dysfunction.

<comment><USER7> Another Effexor success story here. After spending most of my life suffering through mood changes for no reason (e.g., sometimes I got sad after seeing a color, or the way that something was arranged -- I've called this "emotional synesthesia"), Effexor has made me a normal person again. I've been taking the lowest dose for 7 years now, with no side effects besides dulling of emotions (interestingly, it makes decision making hard -- for me, it now requires me to write a pro/con list when facing a decision because there are few emotions involved, even when buying something that should be slightly exciting, like a new car). As someone who had a great childhood and no major traumas, it makes me wonder if I'm one of the people who have a legitimate "chemical imbalance".

<comment><USER8> > (interestingly, it makes decision making hard -- for me, it now requires me > to write a pro/con list when facing a decision because there are few > emotions involved, even when buying something that should be slightly > exciting, like a new car)

This is actually a known phenomenon! Emotions are key to the decision-making process, and when they are impaired for whatever reason then you are more likely to make suboptimal decisions. I recommend Antonio Damasio's book Descartes' Error for a good picture of how this works.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the book suggestion. I'm now wondering whether an overactive emotion circuitry makes one an even better decision maker or does it impair it? Perhaps the book will provide some insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway2018-2 One of the things that really scares me about working with a therapist is that I have suicidal thoughts a lot. Like, I don't deserve to be alive or that I want to die. I'm still pretty productive, make a good salary, was recently promoted. I'm scared that if I were really open about these feelings, something bad would happen, that I could be hospitalized. Which feels like a real step backwards to me. A step towards not actually getting better.

<comment><USER9> Suicidal ideation is different than having a plan and access to the method to follow through.

It's when ideation proceeds to having a timeline and decision to die by suicide is when hospitalization is absolutely necessary. At the end of the day, if I a person wants to die by suicide, there is very little anyone can do about it.

<comment><USER10> I doubt a bad therapist would not report ideation and risk it in the US. Specially a not very good therapist, as seem to be norm in a country where their effectiveness is diminished everywhere in favour of promoting the unrealistic benefits of psychologist and drugs (which they will prescribe in day one)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was hoping for something insightful but really got more of the same antiestablishment alt-med ranting you'll find elsewhere on the web.

Dude even cites his anecdotal experience to claim psych meds don't work while at the same time claiming mental healthcare is full of psuedoscience and vaguely endorsing something that sounds an aweful lot like Freudian psychoanalysis. So that was pretty rich.

Well, if we're comparing anecdotes, my experience is that when a certain relative of mine was on lithium, she didn't try to stab me in the bathtub with a steak knife to keep the demons from getting me and when she wasn't on her lithium, she did.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't call experience handling hundreds of patients in in a major metro area such as NY City "anecdotal".

None of this smelled of alt-med ranting. It's the true accounts of a therapist who saw the deficiencies of the system from the inside.

<comment><USER11> It is exactly anecdotal evidence.

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

This person is using their one personal experience as a general indictment of the field rather than using any kind of controlled method to consider outcomes which is the only way to determine if a field of medicine is doing more good than harm or vice versa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a profession that's mentally and emotionally draining. My education background is in psychology, worked at a mental institution for a few months as a mental health assistant. Never met a psychologist that was actively encouraging students to go the therapist route, in fact the opposite. It's something to think long and hard about. One memorable encounter was an aunt of my friend literally grabbed me by the arm when she found out I was planning to be a psychologist and advised against it. Thought "who is this crazy lady", she was head psychologist of several institutions for the district...

<comment><USER13> >> in fact the opposite

What are you telling them to do? I have a psychiatrist friend who consults at the medical center, in a college town. She is getting called in so much she wants to move to a different town.

<comment><USER4> To know what they're getting into. It's mostly a thankless job. One of the OP's video talks about how most therapist just wants the easy clients and refer all their hard ones to the YouTuber. So it will vary greatly depending on who your clients are. Imagine the difference between being a therapist for silicon valley tech employees vs a mental hospital, prison, or juvenile detention center.

If they do their own practice, it's much like any other business, picking the right clients goes a long way in making your job easier and how much money you can make.

Psychiatrist are different than psychologist. The former goes to medical school and can prescribe drugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Autogenerated transcript for those who don't want to sit at the video for half an hour: [https://pastebin.com/XCe5Kctr](https://pastebin.com/XCe5Kctr)

</comment><comment><USER15> I wish he had gone into more detail about the specific issues with anti- depressants.

Most anti-depressants target serotonin or norepinephrine because the medical industry is still more or less following the "monoamine hypothesis". The hypothesis goes like this: monoamine neurotransmitters are crucial in the human brain, depressed people have depleted levels of them, therefore we should give them a drug that prevents their reuptake.

But there are issues. SSRIs take roughly 5 hours to become bioavailable, but the positive effects of antidepressants take weeks. Why? If the core issue was depleted serotonin levels, shouldn't the person be happier same-day?

Perhaps I'm building a strawman (I doubt med professionals believe the mono- amine hypothesis either), but antidepressants are being prescribed at record rates, and they are being increasingly trusted by the public. Why? The science is trial and questionnaire, the drug efficacy is low, and the side effects are many.

<comment><USER16> > But there are issues. SSRIs take roughly 5 hours to become bioavailable, but > the positive effects of antidepressants take weeks. Why? If the core issue > was depleted serotonin levels, shouldn't the person be happier same-day?

Also we don't see negative effects on non-depressed people that take drugs to reduce serotonin levels (or so I was told).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What are good countries/societies that have good mental health systems? What does that even look like? Is this a uniquely American problem?

<comment><USER2> Canada is better than United States from my experience of living in both countries.

I sought help with gender dysphoria in the United States. Ended up being drugged with antipsychotics, while stuck in a hospital for two months against my will and when I just wanted to start HRT. Doctor wrote untrue statements on my medical records and I couldn't find anyway to sue since I was a poor university student at the time. Almost resulted in suicide. Insurance was billed approximately $55,000

Now I'm in Canada and I'm suicidal from the past events in life but I can see a psychiatrist once a week. She doesn't recommend drugs and mostly just wants to talk with trying to improve my outlook. I'm trying to get death with dignity in Switzerland and got a positive evaluation from her after several months. Everything in Canada is covered since I was born in Canada (citizenship). I'm in Montréal and from what I've seen most doctors don't push prescription drugs compared to what I saw in United States (Michigan). Canada also has a phone number (similar to 911) but is a direct line to speak to a nurse or social worker for help. People here actually can get help concerning their health right away and not fear having to pay anything.

edit: I think the cost of the healthcare in the USA is why people that don't get help, end up mass shooting and mental health stigma is a result of people not being able to afford it; trying to rationalize it's for people really messed up (not them).

<comment><USER18> I think the cost of healthcare has _something_ to do with it, but surely the culprit is the gun culture that's everywhere you look the moment you leave big coastal cities. The culture that says - "feel threatened? Reach for your gun!"

Also, second what other people are saying - I'm so sorry you were hurt for so long. I hope that you stick around a while, continuing to advocate online for the trans community.

<comment> OpenBSD-reich Oh please. Guns are no more the root of gun violence than BitTorrent is the root of digital piracy. Gun control is the cheap easy path to kudos and biscuits, where improving the mental health system is the long tiring hardwork nobody wants to do. Muslim examples in Europe have shown vehicles and knives to be just as effective.

Last but not least, if you vote away my hobby/toy, don't whine like a little piggy when I rally others to vote away your hobby/toy. Government is force which should be used sparingly and responsibly.

<comment><USER19> > Muslim examples

As you've almost spotted, the problem is one of _radicalisation_ rather than either gun ownership per se or mental health. Other countries have guns. Other countries have people with depression or PTSD. Mass shootings in other countries are generally correctly labelled as terrorism. But people are unwilling to realise that the American mass shooting problem is one of terrorism.

<comment><USER20> Do you think the people driving trucks into people have no mental health issues?

<comment><USER19> Some of them, probably. But not necessarily all of them, and I don't think it's a necessary precondition. I've certainly not heard of very many suicide bombers or mass shooters that had diagnosed but unmanaged mental health conditions.

Is someone having political beliefs that they're willing to die/kill for a sign of mental illness?

<comment><USER20> > Is someone having political beliefs that they're willing to die/kill for a > sign of mental illness?

I think you're making an assumption that this is what is happening. What do unsuccessful, captured suicide bombers say?

<comment><USER19> There are a few of these: [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-conversation- wit...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-conversation-with-an-isis- suicide-bomber-logistician-a-1043485.html)

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/raza-rumi/an-interview- with-a...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/raza-rumi/an-interview-with-a- suicide-bomber_b_10387052.html)

<comment><USER20> Thanks! The first one isn't very relevant because it is the leader, who can say what he likes to indoctrinate anyone.

The second is incredibly interesting and seems very much like a brainwashing. I can see how an otherwise normal person can end up this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The field of psychiatry is actually undergoing a lot of changes and improvements. With progress in understanding how our brain works at chemical level, and newer drugs to balance the chemicals when they are out of balance. Many of the previously untreatable mental problems are now treatable with medicine.

That is unfortunately only available to psychiatrists, who has medical designation.

source: a psychiatrist friend

<comment><USER22> > With progress in understanding [...] and newer drugs to balance the > chemicals [...] Many [...] mental problems are now treatable with medicine.

The catch here is that those deciding what "progress" is, are the same therapists and health professionals of the sort speaking in the video. And as they said, they are under immense pressure of their own. The alternative to "medication" is social support, of which they themselves are often primary sources. They are overburdened themselves and often under-supported by gov, so they're under stress (therapists for well-off people excluded).

tl;dr - they have a huge incentive (for preservation of their own sanity) to see "medication" as progress, because it relieves their own burden (which is structural to system).

I'm not saying this is malevolent or judging anyone to be bad, but it's something to be wary of

Disclaimer/source: sibling is community social worker

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> reading this is like taking a time-machine back to the dark ages. It's like the "Bring out yer dead!" scene in Monty Python's "Holy Grail", only _not funny_.

For the love of God, use Neuro-linguistic Programming.

The "vicarious traumatization" wouldn't be a problem if you used techniques that _don 't require_ reliving the trauma! It would be healthier for both the therapist and the client.

There are _repeatable algorithms_ for dealing with e.g. early life trauma. You can actually "go back in time" and relive a different life and have it massively and permanently affect your real-world present-day life.

One of the strangest and saddest things about psychology is the disconnect between practitioners and researchers on the one hand, and the cutting-edge state-of-the-art techniques and "schools" on the other. (The NLP wikipedia page is all about how it's a pseudo-science. Sheesh!)</comment>


Announcing TypeScript 2.6 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2017/10/31/announcing-typescript-2-6/ <comment><USER2> I am not coding daily anymore and I am a bit worried that I am losing touch with all the TypeScript improvements. I never imagined that one day I will complain the web programming language is evolving too fast :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Luckily we try to have a regular release cadence (~2 months or so), and you can set your expectations with the Roadmap[1]. Hope you enjoy the release!

[1] [https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/Roadmap](https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/Roadmap)

<comment><USER2> You guys are doing a stellar job!

The only additional thing I could wish for is a learning-oriented portal with a multitude of examples, focused on people with traditional JS background, that wish to learn all the advanced (coming from advanced languages) coding concepts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've recently started using TypeScript and VS Code properly and have really enjoyed it. The only niggle I've had so far has been around typing curryable functions, but I appreciate that's probably a tricky thing to cater for nicely (?)

<comment><USER4> There's a proposal in the roadmap to deal with this:

[https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/5453](https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/5453)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish there existed a lib for code that targets both Node and the browser, something like Eslint's _" shared-node-browser"_ env.

<comment><USER6> browserify is the node standard API in the browser.

<comment><USER5> Yes I know what Browserify (and Webpack, Require.js, Rollup, JSPM, etc..) are, I've used them extensively and even wrote extensions for them :)

What I was referring to is the the "lib" setting of tsconfig.json: when you have code that is meant for both Node and the web, it would be better tested only against the smaller scope of functions and globals that are shared by both (like the eslint env "shared-node-browser").

Right now, people add the "dom" lib even when they just meant the non-DOM subset common to both (such as console), so if for example you accidentally refer to a window method in a module meant to be usable in both contexts, it won't get caught until runtime.</comment></comment></comment>


WaveGlow: A Flow-Based Generative Network for Speech Synthesis - <AUTHOR> https://nv-adlr.github.io/WaveGlow <comment><AUTHOR> Source code: [https://github.com/NVIDIA/waveglow](https://github.com/NVIDIA/waveglow)</comment>


Not-so-crazy alternative to more finanacial regulation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.payne.org/2009/03/26/dont-regulate/

<comment><USER2> Sorry, it's a totally crazy proposal. What he is proposing is moving liability beyond a certain point to the stockholders. Try this scenario on. Your 401K is invested in a mutual fund which holds some portion of AIG, maybe your equivalent is 10 shares. AIG holds some significant percentage of the $60 trillion in derivatives out there. Are you prepared to pledge your assets to cover your share, say $100,000? Thought not. (Lloyds of London works that way. That's why they dont let us join.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points.

It probably doesn't make sense to allocate ALL of AIG's losses to shareholders, just enough to create some disincentive.

Also, with this mechanism, the market would figure out over-leveraged companies with liability exposure and beat down the share prices.

Finally, maybe the answer is to allocate losses not to shareholders, but to officers, directors, and highly compensated employees, bounded by the company compensation to each person.

In other words, if you create a "too big to fail" company that fails, you might start to be personally liable for what the company's paid you in the past, and has promised to pay you in the future. The idea, again, is not to get back all of the loss, but to dis-incent extreme, leveraged risk taking by management.

<comment><USER3> These people didn't create a too big to fail company, they were hired by a too big to fail company. When I'm taking a job as an engineer I should have to inspect all the books to make sure they're clean or else I could lose all my personal savings? Forget it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea sounds good if you have a chip on your shoulder about rich people, which the author clearly does, but the proposed system is insane. Good economies encourage people to work and invest. This is a MASSIVE disincentive to do both. It is no coincidence that many of the world's poorest economies are found in regions where the government thinks like this.

<comment><USER5> You didn't finish the sentence: "It's a massive incentive to do both..." in the form of a single company over the liability limit.

The obvious hack is to slice the company into (company size)/(liability limit) pieces, but while typing up my complaints about how easy that is, it occurred to me that we have anti-trust, anti-racketeering, and anti-price-fixing laws in place that are basically solving the same problem, so maybe it could work after all with a sufficiently clever law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Upvote for accuracy. This is the best solution to many problems. Liability should only be limited between two parties through a contract. It's ridiculous how by paying the government a higher percentage of your profits you better protect your own assets if your company hurts a third party (ie pollution). This would easily be the easiest way to solve many problems, as the author points out, but it is also the only time I've had to grant credence to the argument it leading to a race to the bottom. Usually you only hear left- wingers say that when they complain about free markets or sweatshop labor abroad, but this is a reform that might actually drive out business abroad. I don't even think America has the economic clout to make this an effective measure when the status quo is so widespread. It's a great idea, but at a time of psuedo-protectionism taking hold in and each territory at local and state level trying to carve out their own economic niche industry, it's as politically nonviable as it will ever be.

One more thing: Don't assume that they could go after all you're worth, either. No one would associate with an investment, that, if gone awry, would ruin them financially. The point is that liability would be determined on the market between individuals, and there wouldn't be a one size fits all LLC. There would probably be enough to discourage irresponsible behavior, but not so much to make investors fearful.

</comment><comment><USER7> Every investor would immediately pull out all of their money if this was implemented.</comment>


New WhatsApp record: 64 billion messages handled in 24 hours - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/WhatsApp/statuses/451198381856014337 <comment><AUTHOR> That's 64 billion messages sent through a single company. 64 billion messages sent using a single company's proprietary application, communicating with their private servers using their proprietary communications protocol.

I find that kind of disturbing. What happened to that "decentralisation of the web" thing?

<comment><USER2> Problem is that with a decentralised system (say XMPP) you have no controlling interest to ensure you have a decent client - just look at the XMPP clients available on iOS compared with the silo'd systems like iMessage (which is basically XMPP anyway), Hangouts (started as XMPP), Facebook Messenger (also XMPP), WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, whatever.

They are -years- behind in terms of functionality, UI design, UX design, etc. For mass market adoption, you need mass market apps and none of the XMPP ones are up to scratch.

(I would rather use XMPP and have everyone reachable on one "network" than have a folder full of IM apps with distinct bunches of people on each one.)</comment></comment>


How Classical Cryptography Will Survive Quantum Computers - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/how-classical-cryptography-will-survive-quantum-computers <comment><USER2> There's an important thing that the article fails to mention: Fighting "Quantum with Quantum" might sound nice, but it's not only expensive, it doesn't work.

The idea here is to use so-called Quantum Key Distribution where photons are transmitted over a physical line and the laws of physics guarantee its security.

But there's a problem (ok, there are many problems): Quantum Key Distribution relies on an authenticated channel that is simply assumed to already exists. How do you get that authenticated channel? Nobody knows.

(Apart from that QKD would be hugely expensive, wouldn't work over wifi or mobile connections and would have pretty severe distance limits, which all make a "Quantum Internet" a ridiculous enterprise - but the authenticated channel really kills the whole thing as a solution for Quantum Computer attacks.)

<comment><USER3> >Quantum Key Distribution relies on an authenticated channel that is simply assumed to already exists. How do you get that authenticated channel

It does already exist, there are several quantum networks already. Though, there are also signs that the first generation may have technological issues. And the entire benefit is that using it will allow you to detect if the channel is authenticated, it does nothing to ensure that it is.

<comment><USER4> 'hannob is referring to the reliance of QKD protocols on "an ordinary public communications channel, assumed to be susceptible to eavesdropping but not to the injection or alteration of messages." [0] This means that, unless your authenticated channel itself cannot be broken using quantum computers, using QKD with it will still not let you do secure post-quantum key exchange. If you have a authenticated channel that can't be broken with quantum computers, how did you implement that without either already having or arriving at a shared secret? (If you already have a way of securely arriving at a shared secret, then what do you need QKD for?)

[0]: at page 177 in [http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us- bennetc...](http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us- bennetc/BB84highest.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article references a date in the future as if it has already happened:

> In April 2017, the National Institute of Standards and Technology followed > suit, starting a public vetting process lasting 4 to 6 years.

<comment><USER6> I was confused as well. Perhaps the writer was referring to the NIST's April 2016 Report on Post-Quantum Cryptography:

PDF: [http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2016/NIST.IR.8105.pdf](http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2016/NIST.IR.8105.pdf)

April 2016 report announcement: [https://www.nist.gov/news- events/news/2016/04/nist-kicks-eff...](https://www.nist.gov/news- events/news/2016/04/nist-kicks-effort-defend-encrypted-data-quantum-computer- threat)

Edit to add: In the above, I don't see mention of the public vetting process (my search fu is probably weak today). I would be interested in seeing the release of the ongoing commentary and proceedings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two classes of PQ approaches getting a lot of attention right now:

1\. The lattice approaches: NTRU and particularly LWE, which is the simplest of the PQ schemes to get your head around: LWE proposes a linear algebra problem that could be trivially solved through elimination, perturbed with errors that explosively increase the complexity of recovering the unknowns.

2\. Isogenies, which you can think of as higher-order curves, or as a way of doing what we do today with elliptic curve _points_ using entire curves (and the mappings between them) instead.

LWE was briefly deployed in Chrome as an experiment.

</comment><comment> Ar-Curunir This is a pretty good explanation of the state of lattice cryptography.

<comment><USER8> It is, but also it ends on a rather dismal note, basically saying that lattice cryptography is already cracked.

<comment><USER2> It says no such thing. It mentions that there was one lattice-based crypto scheme developed internally by GCHQ that turned out to be not secure. But that was an exotic scheme, you make it sound like the whole field of lattice-based crypto is cracked. No such thing happened.

<comment><USER8> That's a relief.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A startup feasibility question - <AUTHOR>

Last night, I had an idea.  Searching the web, it seems there are already a couple sites which would be pretty direct competitors.
There are a lot of things stacked against me, and I'm curious if people think it is worth the effort to go forward with my idea.  In addition to the competitors, I have a full-time job, and the startup would require a lot of skills I don't currently have (I'm a software engineer, but the idea is very web 2.0ish and I've never used ruby/ajax and have only a basic knowledge of databases).
How plausible is it for a single engineer, working nights & weekends, with minimal web-programming experience, to launch a successful web service? <comment><USER2> you work on it nights & weekends to find out if it has traction. most things don't, but if yours might, then it's probably worth testing the waters.

from what i understand, <http://carbonmade.com> is a good example. three guys working part time (according to their 'story'), who now have a nice lifestyle business. they have big competitors, but have attracted enough paying users to do well for themselves.

so possible, yes. and learning web dev skills won't be a wasted effort, regardless of whether or not this particular venture works out.

if it's a big enough market to support several successes, i'd encourage you to take it on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input. I have some Python skills, so I just bought a Django book, I think that will be the fastest way for me to get something going.

I haven't been this excited in a while. Not only do I need to learn a lot of new tech, I need to figure out a lot of the business/marketing side too. When to start trying to attract users, how to drive traffic to the site, how/if/when to bring in other developers.

Any thoughts on how to determine if the idea has traction? Like number of users after a certain time or reviews/bloggers comments, or even _gasp_ revenue?

<comment><USER2> you may want to read 'founders at work' by jessica livingston (of yc fame). it's interviews regarding the rise of many successful web services (yahoo, hot or not, hotmail, etc).

a lot of those companies started as hobbies or side projects, and one day the site crashed and the founder realized he needed a whole lot more servers to keep up with the growth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> well, it depends on the size/scope (i.e., i don't think you're going to build the next generation of cloud-based services here). but, really, almost anything is plausible if you attack it the right way.</comment>