Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe - <AUTHOR> http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/brazilfootage <comment><USER2> You know that Golden Rule?" Not the one that VCs quote, but the one that goes "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you?"

We should think about that when we choose how to deal with uncontacted tribes. It may be that one day another intelligence will need to decide how to deal with us, and on that day I hope we can say, "Yes, we used to have a habit of massacring technologically inferior peoples we encountered, but we grew up a little and we don't do that any more. Then we used to keep them alive but destroy their culture and identity while mouthing platitudes about how we were helping them, but we grew up a little and we don't do that any more either."

<comment><USER3> We should give them access to technology and to our way of life. Our way of life is better. Preserving their backwards culture so they can continue lives of misery and suffering is just as disgusting as the Prime Directive.

Help is exactly what I would want from advanced alien visitors. I don't want them to respect my culture just because it is mine; I want something better for myself, not cultural relativism.

There is nothing good or enviable about uncivilized lifestyles to preserve; any actions that maintain them in that lifestyle are ensuring they literally die young, mostly of preventable causes. Their lives are short, uncomfortable and brutal. Trying to minimize contact is ensuring they do not get modern medical care and that they retain their dark ages quality (or worse) myths and prejudices.

<comment><USER4> I really hope you are kidding. If not this is so typical of the american way of thinking. Yes, we are so superior lets convert them all to our [insert culture, religion etc...]. What is so bad about leaving them alone? I would bet they are much happer than the majority of the FB and Twitter obsessed narcissist that I run into every day.

While we are at it lets make sure they all become good christians too because anyone that has not accepted christ in their life just does not know what they are missing.

Im not trying to be an ass but I fundamentally disagree with everything you just said. BTW: you to know that Western medicine is not the only medicine in the world. While we are at it lets take them our aids, diabetes, obesity etc...

You are basically saying that your beliefs and way of life are so superior and better than theirs that you must convert them and that is total bullshit. They have a right just as you do to continue their way of life without someone like you coming along and deciding what is and is not ok for them.

<comment><USER5> _What is so bad about leaving them alone? I would bet they are much happer than the majority of the FB and Twitter obsessed narcissist that I run into every day._

What is so bad is you making the decision for them -- one way or the other. It's that kind of pompous paternalistic attitude that caused all kinds of pain and misery.

If they are happy with a life expectancy of 30, of having mothers die in childbirth commonly, of dying of things like scratches and measles -- if they want that life, let them have it. But show and tell them what they are missing and let them decide. Don't arrogantly assume that there's something romantic about living like a caveman. It's just as whacked as automatically assuming they would want all of the modernity we enjoy.

What we've found, over and over again, is that contact with primitive cultures destroys the cultures. That's because you'd have to be a flaming idiot to want to live like that (I find the greatest supporters of "leave them alone" are armchair philosophers living all nice and comfy in the west) We can't help that, but it's no excuse to let people suffer when we can help them stop if (If they so desire) There is nothing noble in inaction.

Treat people as you would like to be treated if you were them. It's really very simple. If you'd like to rant and rave about how much modern life sucks, fine. But don't use these guys as props to do so. They deserve better than that.

By the way, this is also a pet peeve of mine, and I come at this from exactly the opposite pov. Sometimes I think "Star Trek" has done more to muddy up an entire generation of thinkers than a hundred piss-poor colleges could have ever hoped to accomplish.

<comment><USER2> _Treat people as you would like to be treated if you were them._

I wish I had 100 upmods to give. This is exactly what I was saying elsewhere, we should think about how we would want to be treated. Would we want medicine and education offered to us? Would we want the option for some of our elders to live out the rest of their lives in a traditional manner? Would we want bulldozers knocking down our trees? Would we want jobs driving bulldozers?

I don't know the answer, I just know that I'd want to ponder that for a good long while if I had to make a call.

<comment><USER6> I'd want to be left alone - give one example of colonialism that worked out well for indigenous people, and I'll maybe change my mind.

<comment><USER7> Ok.

India is now an "important" country. Burgeoning technologically and culturally, what it received from Britain was access to the intellectual firestorm of the Enlightenment. Hindu thinkers were involved in the formation of Universalism, the idea that all religions were different aspects of the same thing and could be united.

Of course, it cost them the pain of the Pakistan-India divide, the struggle of Gandhi, and a confusing cultural identity among a people that didn't necessarily have a singular cultural identity in the first place. But what price is too much?

South Africa paid the price, and is now among the most advanced of African nations.

Of course, most indigenous peoples just got royally fucked. Aboriginal Australians and the Maori. So I suppose your point in general holds.

<comment><USER8> It is a bit presumptuous to assume that India or S.A. would not have made progress or exchanged "intellectual" information without a country sailing over and lording over it for a hundred years.

Disclaimer: I am an Indian.

<comment><USER7> I'm not assuming anything, I'm making an assertion--an assertion that could be right or wrong. In particular I am not assuming/asserting that India or S.A. would not have made progress.

I am saying that the effects of colonial rule are so unstable and so varied that it can be difficult to the point of meaninglessness to say a country would be "better" or "worse" without it.

The Bengal Renaissance is a documented movement, founded and driven by people exposed to Western thought. That doesn't mean the movement wasn't theirs, that they weren't the ones producing "intellectual" information. But they were in a different place because of colonialism than they would have been without, one where Indians went to school in Britain and where people were writing letters to each other across the ocean.

<comment><USER8> Technically, I agree, but using this same logic, the effects of _any_ major historical incident are so unstable and so varied that "it can be difficult to the point of meaninglessness to say a country would be "better" or "worse" without it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder what kind of disturbance just the helicopter (or whatever method was used to capture the footage) caused on the tribe.

Obviously the tribe was aware of it, but if they've never been contacted, would they be able to even fathom what such a thing is? I'm genuinely curious because I'm also genuinely ignorant on how "uncontacted" tribes like that are and what their civilization is like.

Could anyone enlighten me? It seems like such a fascinating area of study.

<comment><USER10> There's a pretty detailed article ([http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1022822/Incre...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1022822/Incredible- pictures-Earths-uncontacted-tribes-firing-bows-arrows.html)) that explains what anthropologists assume they're thinking. It's basically "Stay Away" since the plane is a foreign object. In fact, you can see the tribesmen readying their weapons in case the flying object veers towards them.

<comment><USER11> Photos taken a couple of years ago showing the "stay away" attitude pretty good [http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/05/uncontacted_tribe_p...](http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/05/uncontacted_tribe_photographed.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "If illegal loggers or miners contact these people, they won't shoot images... They'll shoot guns."

Very few realize that there's more to protect in the Rainforest than trees.

<comment><USER13> You can't imagine how right you are. Tribes like this do not exist officially. Loggers would not hesitate to wipe them off - problems solved, no questions asked.

What is more troublesome, is that nobody knows how often this has happened in the past.

<comment><USER14> I'm surprised you can so easily equate illegal loggers with mass murders.

I'm actually a bit shocked at a lot of the comments here. This story has brought out the crazy in a lot of posters that's generally suppressed by the focused theme of HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Man charged with the task of protecting indigenous people from intruders flies overhead in a plane named after the Cherokee indian tribe.

Insignificant in the great scope of things, but I smirked a little.

</comment><comment><USER16> I hope this undisturbed group of Emacs users is allowed to continue their peaceful way of life.

<comment><USER17> That raises an important ethical question.. should we not let them know about vim?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have been skimming over the comments in here, and I have come to two thoughts. First off, I don't have a well-established stance, but our god-like observation of their civilization is ... strange. I wonder what would happen if they all were struck by a terrible disease as the scientists with their kilometre-spying cameras watched. Would they go and help? Where's their "don't contact them" nature, then?

But that wasn't the thought I intended to contemplate. Some people have said that their culture is lost. Why is their culture lost? And this is terrible, but, does it matter? If their culture is full of things long since dis-proven, what has been lost? If they choose to leave their old ways upon discovering/learning (through whatever means) our ways, what does that matter? Please explain why these things are bad to me. If a people has chosen a different way of life upon experiencing it, who cares that it's gone? The anthropologists that were having fun? This desperation to keep these people isolated reminds me of another article I read on HN a while ago that discussed scientists that were very sad about the situation that polar bears and grizzlies were beginning to breed. I thought it was beautiful to see their joined species able to survive, but I can only imagine the people that wanted to keep them separate were disappointed, in part, because there wouldn't be any pure-bred polar bears anymore.

My other thought is a request to HN for this very type of article. Please, please, please, for heated debates like this with the numerous tree-like threads. Please make a way to collapse sub-threads so the train of thought that brought someone to a particular point can be clearly seen.

</comment><comment><USER19> To avoid any confusion, from the site's FAQ:

"Is this an 'undiscovered' or 'lost' tribe?

No. This is empty sensationalism. It's extremely unlikely there are any tribes whose existence is totally unknown to anyone else. The uncontacted tribe in these photos has been monitored by the Brazilian government for 20 years, and lives in a reserve set up to protect uncontacted tribes."

</comment><comment><USER20> Absolutely fascinating stuff, and for me anyway it raises some interesting ethical questions. Making contact with these tribes would (I would imagine) destroy a lot of culture, to say nothing of the obvious issues of disease, etc. On the other hand, in a society where we claim to value innovation and progress, failing to offer these tribes the benefits available to others feels a little wrong. Given the choice between our lifestyles and theirs, how many of us would choose theirs?

It raises some interesting legal questions too. In the United States for example, I believe (and I could be wrong on this) starting in 2014 we would fine these tribes for failure to purchase health insurance. To say nothing of the "Republican Form of Government" guarantee in the constitution.

<comment><USER21> Traditionally those legal problems are solved by simply granting these people exceptions. I mean aboriginal people and native Americans do get special treatment in some cases.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I expect thats how it would be handled here (although "granting an exception" to the Constitution could get tricky, depending on the timeline in this hypothetical).

What I really meant (and I wasn't very clear on this) was more of how could we ethically reconcile our laws with our desire, if we have one, to preserve such tribes. For the most part it seems like if you have to special-case something you're doing something wrong to begin with. So either allowing such tribes to exist without interference should run counter to what we're trying to accomplish with our laws, or our laws don't actually say what we intend them to.

<comment><USER21> Some of these tribes are even cannibals, they kill people and eat them. Should we turn a blind eye to that too? I don't know. It's a hard question.

<comment><USER22> There are several ways to anthropophagy, endogamous (eating your ancestors) and exogamous (eating your enemies). Most cannibals tribes are of the first kind, until some external pressure brings them to eat their enemies : \- rise of slave trades may have pushed African tribes into exogenous cannibalism; \- extreme scarcity of proteins source and population growth may be the cause of cannibalism in Papua.

In any case, as Montaigne famously said more than 400 years ago, they would find our way of treating our dead relatives (or enemies) incredibly cruel and barbaric, letting them rot in the ground instead of giving them the proper grave their souls call for in our own bodies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The idea of uncontacted tribes - still in existence - is awesome. ...but it's a little scary too to consider the famous Arthur C. Clarke quote "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Sure, these tribes may not have been contacted, but what mythologies have evolved to explain the strange, huge bird in the sky that circles around them from time to time?

<comment><USER24> How do they know it's huge? From their point of view, it could be the size of a bird.

The story goes that the Huaorani called Nate Saint's plane a "woodbee" before he landed near them. After all, it flies and it buzzes.

<comment><USER25> They have two eyes with slightly different perspectives, and there's also the atmosphere to color blue things that are far away, so they have some idea of how far is it.

Knowing how far and how big it looks like, you can estimate the real size.

It's part of how our eye-brain interface works.

<comment><USER24> Yes, but it's hard to judge things that you have no reference frame for.

There's another story about the Grand Canyon. Apparently the first Spaniards to reach it estimated it to be a couple hundred feet deep, and thought the part of the Colorado that they could see was about six feet across. It was a mile down and 200 feet across, but they had no concept of a canyon that big.

<comment><USER26> A better example might be from Colin Turnbull's _The Forest People_ where one of the Pygmies accompanied him to the edge of the forest and refused to believe a distant "bug" was really a buffalo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am really getting a kick out of the ironic juxtaposition of the most technologically primitive segment of the world population getting space up here at the top of Hacker News. After all, the Hacker News audience represents arguably the most technologically sophisticated segment of the world population.

<comment><USER28> Unfortunately I think Hacker News, in this thread, is providing support to the thesis that there is something about the engineer mindset that is inherently authoritarian and extremist.

<http://www.slate.com/id/2240157/>

<comment><USER29> Perhaps when your job is to be right, and success or failure is quite clear (either the program compiles or it doesn't; either the bridge supports its design weight or it crumbles), it's easy to extend that mindset to the rest of the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/01/5965571-newl...](http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/01/5965571-newly- released-photos-of-uncontacted-amazon-indian-tribe-give-us-a-glimpse-of- another-world?GT1=43001)

This has better photos. According to NBC report in 2008, an agency has been aware of the tribe and have been tracking (and not contacting) them since 1910.

<comment><USER30> They mostly likely have had contact with some people. In the first photo, you can make out a nice machete and a pot.

<comment><USER31> Supposedly this is due to intertribal trade, rather than direct contact with the larger outside communities.

<comment><USER32> Is there some number of links that would make this tribe 'contacted' then? I would have assumed 'uncontacted' meant 'no knowledge of outside world at all' but it seems not.

Having this tribe get a machete and pot and see a plane makes it feel pretty 'contacted'. Not that I want to quibble over some definition...

<comment><USER31> I would make a Facebook joke here, but...

I think that they mean that these people have not been in direct contact with non-tribal people. It sounds like most of them are _very_ isolated. Even the other tribes that have contact with the mainstream society seem to have little to no contact with these "uncontacted" tribes.

This is mostly info I read on that website and related links, i.e. I'm not an expert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This "footage" hit the news a couple of years ago in Brazil, and a couple of days later was challenged as being fake. I could look more into details and see if there is any translation from the articles back then, but I will stand that this is NOT an "uncontacted tribe".

<comment><USER34> Interesting - can you link to any sources?

<comment><USER33> "The photographer that took the picture, José Carlos, has admitted that the tribe has, in fact, been known about since 1910. He created the hoax "in order to call attention to the dangers the logging industry may have on the group."

[http://www.geekologie.com/2008/06/fake_uncontacted_amazon_tr...](http://www.geekologie.com/2008/06/fake_uncontacted_amazon_tribe.php)

<comment><USER35> If you read the source linked to in that article, the hoax wasn't that the tribe was uncontacted; it was that it was only just discovered. However, the fact that it's been known of for so long certainly does suggest that there has been at least some contact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Uncontacted tribe has had some contact [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/pb-1...](http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/pb-110201-tribe- da-03.photoblog900.jpg) \- I see a metal pot in that image.

<comment><USER25> Maybe some group of loggers left it a while ago? There's a chance it's only indirect contact.

[EDIT: or maybe inter-tribal trade, as someone else mentioned]

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> As far as the argument of contact or no contact, I don't have an answer but I think the issue is that contact often destroys the culture rather than helps it grow and evolve.

I have read some things that indicated native americans lost in part because they adopted guns and abandoned bows. They lacked the means to make or money to buy the type of oil that would work in cold weather and used lard instead, which firms up in the cold. They would keep their guns under their blankets with them to keep the lard warm enough for the guns to work. Just adopting one piece of technology did not resolve their problems and it was a technology they were ill equipped to adequately maintain.

I am reminded of a scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" where he tells the Arabs "If you take English engineers, you take English rule."

Where you have a large, "evolved" culture with a density of people, material goods, information and so on, contact with a culture that is less "dense" (in terms of numbers of people, amount of material goods, etc) tends to simply wipe it out, sometimes literally killing all members (because microbes in large communities evolve rapidly and become more virulent -- Americans who move to Europe, which is more densely populated, routinely wind up with a horrific flu shortly after moving there, far worse than the flu bugs typically caught in the U.S. This is common knowledge in the military community/among military families who have ever lived over there.).

I wish a knew a means to gently make contact and offer options. I think that would be the ideal. I have no idea if it is achievable.

<comment><USER38> Lawrence of Arabia? Might as well cite Tarzan comics.

<comment><USER37> Lawrence of Arabia is a historical figure and I did a college paper on him. He accomplished amazing things in the real world in terms of helping the Arabs achieve their independence. The Arabs were a relatively "primitive" (tribal) people compared to the English who sought to rule them. The film is based on real events. Like most such films, it is part documentary, part fiction/drama. He was famous enough during his life to have been followed around by a journalist. The journalist provided both actual documentation of Lawrence's activities (through film and photos) but also hyped it, so not all of that information is really accurate. Some themes in the movie are relevant to the discussion here:

The Arabs keep wanting British artillery as The Answer. The British don't want to give it to them because they want to keep the Arabs under their thumb. (Note: Like with American Natives, they apparently saw "guns" as a source of power and wanted them completely out of context -- unable to manufacture them themselves and so on.)

Lawrence tells the Arabs that he thinks their traditional ways are their source of power -- that riding camels through the desert like they did historically is the way to have power equivalent to British power. At the time, Britain was a Naval power and he compares the camels to ships and the desert to the ocean.

I cannot verify whether or not Lawrence ever said that but it is historical fact that he rode with Arab irregulars and that such troops traveled by camel. It is also historical fact that he took Aqaba, a key port city, with a force of only 40 men.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._E._Lawrence>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_of_Arabia_(film)>

Here is an actual quote of the man which agrees with the gist of what I am saying and from a reputable source:

 _Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is._

<http://telawrence.info/telawrenceinfo/life/biog_quotes.shtml>

<comment><USER37> Too much time has passed and I no longer have an edit button. Wanted to make it more accurate. My brain mangled the following:

Lawrence and Auda left Wedj on 9 May 1917 with a party of 40 men to recruit a mobile camel force from the Howeitat of Syria.[10] On 6 July, after an overland attack, Aqaba fell to those Arab forces with only a handful casualties.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt>

So he went with 40 men and more joined. It would be better if my remarks indicated he took Aqaba with a relatively small number of Arab irregulars. But they apparently basically overran the city with a small-ish force. The point is not inaccurate, but the detail of how many men is inaccurate.

My bad -- posting in the middle of the night while suffering insomnia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's so easy to play God hovering in the skies, and make decisions for these people's future, isn't it? Maybe they actually don't enjoy 50+% child mortality, dying of appendicitis, and having to barter a truckload of plantains for a pot and a steel machete. Why don't they send someone on the ground, to explain to them that there's a big world out there that can change their ways forever, and give them a choice whether they'd like to be a part of it or not?

<comment><USER40> Well, you could not simply explain it to them, you would have to show it to some of them, and let them live the life, before they could make an informed decision.

Perhaps the best advice would be to contact other tribes that have been assimilated, and see how they feel about the process. Would they go back, if they could?

<comment><USER28> This has been done.

Individuals have been taken from tribes and allowed to integrate into western society.

They usually choose to go back.

<comment><USER41> link?

<comment><USER18> yes, a link would be very nice for that one.

Furthermore, I'd like to know reasons for their return, if that's the case. Also, I'd like to know what their children think, if they have them in the outside world, and what happens if they're provided some of the benefits of outside society (eg: state-of-the-art surgery from top-trained surgeons)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> A trail to the articles pronouncing this a hoax/fake back in 2008:

[http://www.geekologie.com/2008/06/fake_uncontacted_amazon_tr...](http://www.geekologie.com/2008/06/fake_uncontacted_amazon_tribe.php)

<comment><USER43> If you read that article, what the guy supposedly lied about was that no one else knew about them. But they do live there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Did this shatter anyone else's perception of how well-connected we are, as a species?

<comment><USER44> The existence of isolated social groups isn't a mind-blowing concept to me, but not something I think about daily either. Does a new awareness of the exception to the rule really change your perception of how interconnected most of humanity is?

Maybe I'm reading too much into this comment, but something about it seems to imply that being disconnected from the global network is a bad thing. Though I myself am a highly plugged-in urbanite, I hope that people who see this remember that living in a small group (or even alone) is just as valid as assimilating with the vast network that connects the majority.

<comment><USER34> I didn't mean it as a negative comment; I don't see being isolated as a bad thing, but definitely (at least) mildly mind-blowing. Honestly, I don't think I've though about this level of isolation (not used negatively here either) from other regions and cultures. For the majority of my life I have been connected to people via different networks and this is a culture that I, also a highly plugged-in urbanite, can't relate to much (again, not in a bad way). I think that other people who see this on HN share a similar viewpoint - we're so far removed from isolation that we don't see this as "valid" or "invalid" but as a completely different culture that doesn't relate to ours except on very basic levels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Meta about some of the comments on this post: I've never seen such unbridled arrogance and xenophobia in a post on HN before. The our way or the highway attitude is shocking.

<comment><USER46> The ignorance and lack of empathy are surprising.

<comment><USER47> It's unclear whether you agree with the g'parent or disagree. Perhaps that was intentional. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Watching this clip was one of the worst Flash video experiences I have ever had. Ridiculously laggy.

On another note, watching this video was also one of the most humbling experiences I have ever had.

<comment><USER49> Why was it humbling?

<comment><USER50> Maybe the experience of using flash?

<comment><USER31> Seeing how far we've come, but we still can't get flash right, I would guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This issue is tricky and not for some of the reasons I've seen listed in this thread. My maternal grandparents were both the children of indigenious South Americans so this is somewhat personal for me. One the one hand if we contact them then we are dooming everyone in the tribe above the age of about ten to dependency for the rest of their lives. They will go from being autonomous, skilled members of a sovereign tribe to illiterate, unskilled Peruvian citizens in one fell swoop. In their world they own their land, have their own system of wealth and acheivement and customs that are tailored to their own strengths. In our world, they are penniless and barely subsist on land that is actually owned but the Peruvian government. Unless the proponents of contact are willing to provide the extensive resources they will need in order to assimilate to our way of life, I say we leave them alone. I saw alot of mention of technology and medicine and all the other comforts of modern life, but those things are not free for the taking. There are hundreds of thousands of

</comment><comment><USER52> There's something appalling about this, as if remote tribal people are to be watched like animals on the Discovery channel. It's creepy. They're not there for your viewing entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER53> As the BBC reports, the advocacy group that is promoting these images acknowledges that the persons shown have steel machetes, which must be trade goods. So to call them "uncontacted" is stretching a point.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12325690>

</comment><comment><USER54> Reminds me of "Guns, Germs, and Steel". I've started reading it a few weeks ago, following recommendations on another HN thread. Great book so far.

Part of the book focuses on diseases, and how epidemic diseases only spread in large populations. Problem appears when small tribes with no immunization are exposed to these "common" diseases...

</comment><comment><USER55> as I am currently living in Peru, this is pretty moving to me. the argument here on both sides is pretty powerful, and you can easily find passionate people telling you it's real, or it's fake, etc etc. The president's (Alan Garcia) accusation that environmentalists are making "uncontacted people" up seems pretty ridiculous to me though, as there seems to be a lot of evidence supporting the claim that there a number of uncontacted peoples in the remote regions of the country.

</comment><comment><USER56> I say it's time to send them their Hogwarts letters.

</comment><comment><USER57> It sucks that if these uncontacted tribes were to try to make contact, the only people that would be there to meet them would be loggers. I can't imagine loggers would treat them with the same dignity/respect that a trained professional might.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm astounded (perhaps I should not be) that so many assume that the lives of the people in these cultures must be short brutish and unpleasant. For a culture, or set of cultures to survive and likely thrive for 1000s of years in the jungle it must be a rich life. Take a look at the decoration these people paint on their skin for instance. They have free time to decorate and adorn themselves. They have farms. They have technology and knowledge beyond what your small minds can imagine. Yes, technology, they can light fires, create traps for the food they need, farm and make tools from all manner of naturally occurring materials that surround them in abundance. I'd wager they live an abundant happy life. Sure, they have their difficulties. But I live in modern society and I have lots of difficulties too. These people live in a tightly knit family and society. I envy them in some ways. I certainly wouldn't be sitting here thinking how much better I have it from them. They have a different way of life. To assume their way or our way is better can only stem from ignorance, and oh of course, no shortage of arrogance.

If someone took you and immersed you in the jungle you'd be lucky to last a day or two.

Think of what would happen to one of these people if you put them in a city.

</comment><comment><USER59> I once attended a talk by Carl Sagan where, during the question-answer session, someone mentioned how much we could learn from "primitive societies". Sagan replied that we should not glorify such lives. In addition to other things, he said that in 1900 the average life span in civilized countries was 35. As artificial and commercialized as we have become, technology has improved our lives.

</comment><comment><USER60> Realistically, they're on borrowed time. I mean, the common cold (etc, etc) isn't going to play nice once it finally hits them.

</comment><comment><USER61> With the amount of comments on this page it's unlikely anyone will even see this, but am I the only one surprised at how many people still use the term "Indian" to refer to natives populations who look a bit like Indians?

As far as I'm aware, this is the sole reason for the origination of the term in this context (as opposed to, you know, people from India).

<comment><USER62> I think the term has nothing to do with looks. It originated because, when Columbus first came to America, he thought he was in India (that _was_ his destination, after all), so he called the people there "Indians". Now the term tends to mean "natives".

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I find it extremely disgusting. There's nothing wrong with contacting others. Everyday I'm contacted by lots of people: colleagues, marketers, head hunters etc. They give me _choice_. Let members of the tribe enjoy the same freedoms. Stop treating them like animals in a ZOO.

</comment><comment><USER64> Makes me wonder if aliens are not treating us also as uncontacted tribe but on a larger scale.

</comment><comment><USER65> Did anyone else notice how healthy they looked?

<comment><USER66> Selection effect. You also didn't see anyone with cleft palettes or appendicitis or iodine deficiency. If somebody gets sick or injured in that tribe, they're much more likely to die than in most places. Also, sick or injured people don't romp around the forest checking out strange birds in the sky.

<comment><USER65> Yeah but compare the groups you saw there to some random groups you'd see in a mall here. There's a pretty big difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Given loggers, or just the general expansion of modern civilizations, they will run into the outside world. Wouldn't it be better if they were given a gentle introduction? Send in some speakers and voice/video feeds. Eventually send in people. If they want to be left alone afterwards, it's their choice. If some people want to explore the outer society, let them.

If you look at say, Malaysia, the Iban have done pretty well in Sarawak-- contact doesn't have to result in the destruction of the natives...

</comment><comment><USER68> Knowledge is misery, so better leave them alone.

Having knowledge about the world only shows you how much you don't know. And the more you learn, the more you are aware of all the things you have not yet discovered and will never learn in your lifetime.

So, its much nicer to be able to know "the whole world" (i.e. the isolated village you live in). You know everything and everybody in the "world" and for the stuff you can't explain (lightning, death) you just make up a god and blame it on him/her.

What a great life!

</comment><comment><USER69> It's absurd to say they are "uncontacted". They are humans after all. How can such a smart crowd fall for that headline stuff?

Concerns about their public health and inability to defend their property rights (our interpretation of those rights, at least) may be well founded. However, this whole episode says more about how Brazil tries to control loggers than it does about indigenous people. They are finally starting to slow down deforestation, using any tool they can.

</comment><comment><USER70> To everyone saying that they should be given the opportunity to join our civilization, it's not like they have a choice. They'll die if they get the common cold or flu or at the very least come close to death.

And how do we know that our civilization is "better" for them? It's not like they could become incorporated into our society anyway (not the current generation). Contacting and converting them is more an act of self- righteousness than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER71>
      "The house of 'The Last of his Tribe', a sole surviving uncontacted man who lives on his own in the forest after the rest of his tribe were massacred"

<http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/evidence>

</comment><comment><USER72> How do uncontacted people view us? They seem to be mesmerized by the plane, and even chase after it for a longer look. Can't we just ask them how they want to relate with us? I'm sure we can find some way to discuss the matter with them and still not be invasive.

</comment><comment><USER73> We shouldn't impose anything on them, but why not make contact?

Offer them our technology and let them decide whether they want to use it.

I wouldn't want to be treated like a primitive animal in a zoo incapable of making their own choices by a technologically superior way of life.

</comment><comment><USER74> I saw pictures from this video months ago. I thought it was demonstrated then to be a "hoax" or faked.

No?

</comment><comment><USER75> I think the best way to do this is observe, document and study as much of their culture as we can without contact, After that contact them to with the goal of medical help and protection. And proceed carefully from there.

</comment><comment><USER76> In my opinion they would have left their forrest a long time ago if they where really curious to seek out what was beyond it. The fact that they stay, indicates to me that they are happy with the way life is.

<comment><USER77> Let's think about, say, American slaves in 1835. Only _some_ slaves risked their lives trying to reach free states or Canada and escape slavery. Therefore any slave who remained must have been happy with the way their life was?

Curiosity only has _a little_ to do with it. Maybe the curious ones left and never returned. That doesn't mean those that remain enjoy their lives.

I mean, I could be wrong and they're the happiest people on earth, but I bet some penicillin could make their lives even better.

<comment><USER76> I don't think slaves is the best comparison here, their way of life was artificial and forced on them and there was an unbalance of power. My point was that terms like happiness, and quality of life is hard to find any absolute definitions for. It's highly subjective and ones view of it is very likely colored by the culture a person identifies with. These people do most likely posess expert knowledge of their forrest, hypothetically there is nothing that is preventing them from leaving, or seeking out the unknown. This is not a quality that is unique to the europeans who colonised the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> gokhan's comment is buried quite deep, but needs to be seen:

"Check the FAQ first: [http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions- and...](http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and..).

But could this be because they don't see the benefits of 'our' way of life? If they knew, might they want to join us?

They won't get the chance. In reality, the future offered by the settler society is to 'join' at the lowest possible level often as beggars and prostitutes. History proves that tribal peoples end up in a far worse state after contact, often dead."

</comment><comment><USER79> Did anyone else notice that one of them shot an arrow at the plane? lol.

In all seriousness I wonder how they would treat someone like him if he just showed up one day. Probably depends on the day of the week.

<comment><USER80> I noticed that as well. They seemed quite defensive, but rightfully so since they probably have no idea why the plane is monitoring their village so it might seem as a threat to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Uncontacted? It looks like they're looking right into the lens!

<comment><USER82> True, though they may have filed it away as an unexplained phenomenon, given that the plane was tiny and the camera was shooting from a mile away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Throwing my 2 cents in here but I just wonder whether by giving them right to choose culture we would inadvertently have already made that decision for them.

</comment><comment><USER84> This makes me think of those Waco cult members that felt the wrath of the authorities - because they had children within their community I think.

</comment><comment><USER85> It would be a good opportunity for Amazon to spend some money on charity. Benefits both parties.

</comment><comment><USER86> Time to send Missionaria Protectiva to spread the Panoplia Propheticus among them!

</comment><comment><USER87> Anyone else feel a little guilty just watching it?

<comment><USER73> Why would one feel guilty?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Poor poor people - they'll be better off if we stay away.

EDIT: There is absolutely no chance that our western society has 'got it right'. If you think otherwise, I'm afraid you're deluding yourself.

<comment><USER25> Our life expectancy and education is literally thousands of years ahead of anything they have. You can argue about violence, capitalism and religion, and I'd agree, but parts of our culture _are_ better then theirs in easily measurable ways.

<comment><USER88> education: it depends on the subject- many of the people under discussion are probably expert trackers/hunters and have a more intimate knowledge of their surroundings than even our modern biologists. Most of civilization's education is not very useful in this context.

I doubt there is a single part of our culture that is "better in an easily measurable way". This includes life expectancy, which of course cannot be "literally thousands of years ahead".

<comment><USER89> How is life expectancy not easy to measure? (Unless you mean without disturbing them)

<comment><USER46> Why should we assume 'life expectancy' is an absolute measure of progress. One could equally argue that what one does over the course of a lifetime is more important than how long it lasts. Many people in our social systems spend the best part of 15 years in school, then 40 years working 40 hours a week, and may spend their final years riddled with diseases; depression and mental illness are on the rise; obesity, diabetes, back problems, etc., are increasingly common even in the young.

It was only relatively recently that the overall health of a person living in an agricultural society came to be comparable with the health inferred from ancient hunter gatherer skeletons.

There is no way to objectively 'measure' whether their lives or ours are better spent or more enjoyable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> wow. This would have been 1000X awesome if this was a video captured by one of our space telescopes looking at another galaxy!

</comment><comment><USER67> I must say that the footage is amazing!

</comment><comment><USER91> This is blowing my mind. Do I understand this right? There are people living in the forests of Brazil that have no idea about the modern world?!

<comment><USER92> Yup. And people out there care about the ipad2. Amazing huh?

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> How is it that some peoples can remain in this state for so long? Please don't read disrespect in the question, I mean it neutrally. There seems to have been very little innovation or growth in terms of technology when you look at people still living like this.

<comment><USER88> Because they most likely lead a happy (and possibly leisurely lifestyle by our standards) already. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society>

Perhaps a more interesting question to ask is why would anyone want to switch to civilization? It has really been all downside (except for the wealthiest few %) until very recently in history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> The footage almost looks like clips from the movie Avatar.

<comment><USER70> More like the movie Avatar looks like footage like this ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Relevant: "cultural imperialism" -

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_imperialism>

</comment><comment><USER96> Zuck is probably wondering how he can get them on Facebook at this very moment.</comment>


Nobody but us - <AUTHOR> https://lists.immunityinc.com/pipermail/dailydave/2014-April/000656.html <comment><USER2> I hope that this was offered as an example of the sorts of broken thinking that justifies this sort of backdoor that eventually leaks/is discovered by others.

1\. Key based backdoors are as good as it gets, but in order to be useful to most large entities, they have to be at least somewhat exposed internally, making them prime targets for leakers. 2\. Hackers routinely take over routers. Ask Juniper. 3\. Telcos get hacked. 4\. Hackers are curious fuckers who are interested in the most obscure things. 5\. Also the most impressive boxes, someone will either find a way to emulate it or someone from the team will find it impossible not to build one at home on the weekend 6\. See wireshark also the automated protocol dissector research 7\. Vendors are owned, hackers get early access too.</comment>


How Much Do Countries Spend on Healthcare Compared to the Military? - <AUTHOR> https://www.visualcapitalist.com/what-do-countries-spend-on-healthcare-versus-military/ <comment><USER2> This kind of metric always seemed stupid to me. Many countries are allies of the US, Russia, or China, due to their luck at having a strategic location on the globe, and thus don't have to spend as much in their military, as they can always rely on their allied superpower to take care of them.

<comment><USER3> If you don't pay the child workers in your military factories, you sure can save a lot of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The number of sick people rises with population, the number of enemies does not (at least not directly.)

So looking at military spending per-capita makes a lot less sense than healthcare spending per-capita, it's somewhat apples and oranges.

</comment><comment><USER5> What a pointless infographic. A simple X-Y plot of health vs military spending would have been clearer.</comment>


Unix recovery legend - <AUTHOR> http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/recovery.html <comment><USER2> I got into this situation once. I got pretty far into my recovery before being stymied by the discovery that tar is only distributed via tar archives: <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/tar.html>

<comment><USER3> Is a "shell archive" also a tar-archive?

<comment><USER4> Nope, nor is a cpio archive, both of which are available for download at that site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have experienced this very thing with a SunOS box at the remote end of a satellite link. It was in the US and we were in NZ. Let's just say that you can do a lot with bash and a single root shell.

<comment><USER6> I would have hit Control-D just to get the free trip to New Zealand :)

<comment><USER7> You might earn a trip to the unemployment office instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had a similar thing happen (having to recover from a very very stupid mistake), I hadn't deleted everything, but I had moved the entire tree into /var/www (oops)

This is an profanity-laden blog I wrote immediately after I figured out how to fix it and got everything back up and running:

<http://newslily.com/blogs/94>

(I'll be the first to admit that I sound like an obnoxious teenager in this blog, and that some of the things that I tried to fix it were _very_ naive...it was a few years ago that it happened and as stupid as it is to admit, trying to get everything back up and running made my adrenaline pump pretty hard, so...I apologize in advance...)

<comment><USER9> To be fair: you had this happen on a piece of consumer hardware which can boot off of any of several dozen live CDs or USB drives, available off the internet at megabit speeds using one of the (no doubt) several other pieces of consumer hardware you have in arms reach.

The VAX 11/780 had no portable boot device, and BSD unix had no "installation media". You bootstrapped to a system monitor, loaded a second stage off of tape header into memory manually, and hand-build your root filesystem. And that's assuming you still have your original tapes from Berkeley in storage somewhere.

I actually tried doing this on the simh simulator a while back, out of sheer curiosity. I gave up before managing to make it work.

<comment><USER8> _To be fair: you had this happen on a piece of consumer hardware which can boot off of any of several dozen live CDs or USB drives, available off the internet at megabit speeds using one of the (no doubt) several other pieces of consumer hardware you have in arms reach._

I wish! This was done on a VPS located god knows where and run by a company that was owned by people who didn't seem to speak any English. I remember emailing them and asking them if they could just move my dirs back using a chroot, but they had no clue what I was talking about. If I had allowed my SSH session to time out, I would have most-certainly lost the server and everything on it.

I have since switched to a combination of slicehost and linode.

<comment><USER10> _... I would have most-certainly lost the server and everything on it. I have since switched to a combination of slicehost and linode._

Switching to a different VPS provider is not the right way to prevent data loss. Doing backups is the right way to prevent data loss. :-)

<comment><USER11> This is true, but he gets props in my book for being smart enough to switch away. It seems surprisingly common that people don't do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Single most important habit I've developed as a SysAdmin: measure twice, cut once.

I never just

       sudo rm *

First, I do

       echo sudo rm *

inspect the output, and then use CLI editing to recall the command, and delete the "echo"

I do this for damn near everything that involves a wildcard. It's a lifesaver.

<comment><USER13> I have added a like

alias rm='rm -i'

to my .bashrc. Sure its a pain when i have to delete whole directories but saves my ass.

<comment><USER14> this is default profile on almost any mainstream linux distro these days anyway

<comment><USER13> Not on Arch

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> More fun: libc is hosed on a remote box and you can't find any working statically linked binaries with network support, but still have a few live shells accessible.

I was starting to write a UUDECODE function in pure bash (I'd saved my ass before by pasting uuencoded binaries into terminal emulators) — but then I remembered that bash has built-in tcp support!

At least when called from the exec builtin to spawn a file descriptor, you can open /dev/tcp/$host/$port psuedo-devices. It's existence would have saved me countless more times, if the spoilsports at Debian/Ubuntu hadn't disabled it at compile-time.

<comment><USER16> > but then I remembered that bash has built-in tcp support!

You have to be careful making that assumption anymore, though; the version of bash that's included with Debian (and downstream variants, e.g. Ubuntu) has /dev/tcp and /dev/udp support disabled.

So it's not something you can count on having available in any random environment you log into.

I disagree with Debian's decision to disable it, but they seem pretty firmly set on it -- people have been arguing with them to reverse it for the better part of a decade, to no avail, so I doubt it's going to change. It's a declining minority of users who probably care. But you could do some neat 'party tricks' with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This should only happen to you once in a lifetime.

and this is why my "rm" is replaced by this script... just moving stuff to another directory (trash) and I clean my trash manually (with at least 2 confirmations)...

With all these precautions, if I delete something important, I don't deserve admin rights :-)

randstring=`date "+%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S"_bak`

while [ ! -z "$1" ]; do mv -b -S "$randstring" "$1" ~/.local/share/Trash/files shift done

-hbt

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish there were an idiot mode for unix that would tell you exactly what the command you just entered is going to do. I'd be turning it on all the time when using commands I rarely use.

It would be nice to know I'm about to do something that I don't intend. As long as the system doesn't ask me "are you sure you're sure you're sure?"

<comment><USER19> Command line mysql client has a i-am-a-dummy mode where you cannot run a query like "DELETE FROM _table_ ". You could of course run "DELETE FROM _table_ WHERE 1=1" but at least it saves you sometimes.

<comment><USER20> This is awesome, I never knew about this; I usually type "delete from where" and then fill out the query, just to avoid accidentally hitting enter after typing "delete from users".

For me, this is sort of like standing at the edge of a big cliff; you just have this weird feeling that you might accidentally, compulsively jump.

<comment><USER21> Man, I thought I was the only one who felt like this (the cliff thing). I told a friend once and he became worried that I was suicidal. (I'm not.)

<comment><USER7> I get that too :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _If any of you ever have the same problem, here's the hex for future reference:_

Bookmarked! :)

<comment><USER23> You work on a lot of VAXs? That's VAX assembler.

<comment><USER22> You never know!

(we actually have a huge pile of old old machines in a store room at the office here - Im not sure if there is a VAX in there or not.. there could well be)

I wasn't being too serious though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My favorite recovery (though it was not fun at the time) involved a headless machine that wasn't booting, and all I had available that would boot on the machine was a floppy disk that ran a rescue shell. I modified the floppy to start linux with console=/dev/fd0, and so was able to type blind and then remove the floppy to read the output. After a few painful cycles of this, I noticed I could often guess at what was happening by listening to the write patterns of the floppy drive, and completed the rest of the recovery using essentially morse code.

</comment><comment><USER25> I stopped $ rm -rf ./things -and instead do- $ mv ./things /tmp and just forget about it. Yeah yeah, it won't work on a server, but for a home system that reboots occasionally, it should work fine.

<comment><USER26> I've learned that nobody and nothing should use /tmp, on account of it being 777. The idea is that Mallory can set up a symlink from an anticipated filename ("things" in your example) to an important file or dir. So writing to /tmp/things destroys the symlinked file/dir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Of course if they had been running the proper operating system with a proper filesystem on the Vax then this wouldn't have happened.

You unix kiddies finally got a versioning filesystem now I hear ?

</comment><comment><USER28> Reminds me of my first job straight out of University (1988) - there was a client who had a sysadmin who had a bad habit of logging in as root and running rm *. This didn't cause any immediate problems - but all hell broke loose when tried to reboot their system.

They had about 25 users on a 386-25 - quite a decent system in its day.

</comment><comment><USER29> Does someone know what's this use of grep as cat he alludes at ?

<comment><USER30> Match any non-empty line.

       /usr/bin/grep ".*" /path/of/file

<comment><USER31> Sod any 'non-empty line'

      /usr/bin/grep '^' > output

Or even better, grep can be an editor with line filtering - if you make an mistake, have it throw away the line:

      /usr/bin/grep -v '%' > output

(Any line with a %, throw away, keep the rest - good for multi-line files)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What if you were to symlink your entire tree to say /z - as far as I'm aware, this would not use much more disk space, and as it would be the last to go, could you not call /z/bin/whatever ?

I may be way wrong here, but I thought the symlink would still work with the original being deleted, because the file system won't actually mark the file as gone until all links are gone.

Would (or does) this work? Haven't got access to a unix box right now, so can't try myself, but thought it might be a naive failsafe (at least until you actually wait for _rm -rf_ * to finish...)

<comment><USER33> Symlinks won't save you but you could use hardlinks to make two pointers to the same file. You would have to do it for each file — was it _cp -l_ which would do that.

<comment><USER34> On Linux, I've used "cp -al" to make a forest of hard links, consuming little space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35>
      # cd
      # rm -rf *

I'm wondering why they can delete files under /bin and /dev?

<comment><USER36> Because they are root and those are just files.

Perhaps they need to alias rm to 'rm -I' (-I : prompt once before removal)? I remember one of the MandrakeLinux versions had that enabled by default many years ago. It saved me a couple of times when I was still a Unix noobie.

<comment><USER35> AFAIK a single _cd_ command will set current working directory to /root, and _rm -rf_ will only remove everything under /root. Or does _cd_ command had different behavior in Unix at that time, comparing to shells today?

<comment><USER30> That sort of thing is why /root is now root's home directory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Awesome story. Thanks for the repost. I've never read this one.

</comment><comment><USER38> I appreciate the filesystem snapshots that ZFS give me.

<comment><USER39> Fairly certain that zpool and friend live in /bin or /sbin, so you'd still be pretty hosed if you lost all your system binaries.

<comment><USER38> The choice of what snapshot to mount is part of the boot process, as chosen by grub. Nexenta's apt-clone creates a new snapshot for every system upgrade and adds a new boot entry for rolling back in case it doesn't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> if you could recover "cat" and if there was /proc.. oh well, lots of "if there were".

<comment><USER36> Perhaps just use shells with more builtin commands? Something like busybox. So if you ever do rm -rf * and don't close your shell you still have all the basic utilities available.

<comment><USER41> Busybox is a binary that inspects argv[0] to determine how to behave. This is very different from shell builtins that do not launch a new executable, and will thus function correctly after the executable is remove from the file system. As far as I know, you cannot get busybox to perform it's other functions as "builtins". But if you have a functional debugger, it should be possible, though computing offsets is likely to be hard without another machine (chances are that the busybox binary has been stripped).

<comment><USER34> While busybox is running, if /proc is still there, you could probably use its file descriptor to get it back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> while a newbe i asked on irc what would happen if i move /usr in my sgi indy to a new scsi drive i just installed. sice no one replied i opened a terminal and `sudo mv /usr /newusr; sudo ln -sf /newusr /usr` or something dumb like that.

While i waited i opened netscape and went to read something. Then while it was coping irc was flooded with bad omens and curses about what would happen if i did that on a live system.

The only thing i noticed was that the icon state (the desktop shortcuts changed picture if there was any process open for their target files) would some time blink. But that was it.

Not a thing happened. Even the bookmarks i saved on the netscape bookmark file opened before the move ended up on the right place.</comment>


Why do people latch onto the superficial aspects of other startups? - <AUTHOR> 1.	Startup names are becoming annoyingly standardized. You basically take a word that relates to your industry then ad –ly or instead turn it into a verb by adding –ify at the end. Yet these aspects are completely independent of the startup's success. Instead why don't people try and come up with a name that is short, easy to remember, intuitive to spell, and descriptive of what the company is about. That might actually affect your success as a startup.
2.	FORGET VIRALITY! When I was a freshman in college I uploaded a video to youtube that received 20k views in a week and millions by the months end. I got calls from all the major "funny video" websites and ended up selling to collegehumor.com (~$400), which was a mistake since a week later I got a call from ABC who was interested and offered 3k. The point is the more viral you are the more prone you are to fizzle out faster. The whole ordeal lasted less than a few months. IMO "Virality" and virality coefficients are a waste of time if you want to actually build a business. Spend the time you would improving your viral score and build a better/more useful product.
3.	Do you really need a mobile app? There are plenty of industries in which a mobile app would serve no purpose except wasting the time and resources of the developers.
4.	A/B testing is a waste of time. Instead use that time building a better product! Craigslist/Google, for instance, has barely changed any of their layout/design. Good developers spend time improving their core product  and doing things that are important/matter, not testing the effectiveness of different font colors.
a.	Does design/brand image (logo) even have any effect on success?
Cliffs: If you are going to copy another company at least copy the parts that attributed to their success.
//rant <comment><USER2> "A/B testing is a waste of time. Instead use that time building a better product! Craigslist/Google, for instance, has barely changed any of their layout/design."

Oh, if you only knew...

I have first-hand experience with many of the changes to the Google search results page since the last "noticeable" visual redesign last May. I can think of a dozen or so purely layout & CSS changes that have gone live since then. I bet you didn't notice any of them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice rant. A/B testing helped a few products take off that would otherwise be lost in obscurity, but yea it's easy to fall into the obsession. It's one of those traps to keep yourself busy and avoid thinking. Mobile apps are similar.

Google founders wanted to make it a portal, have calendars, weather, top news on the search page, but Merissa said no. Google's initial success was probably from short loading times on 56K modems, not search results. Might be why they tout how quickly Chrome can load pages. A/B testers rarely test dramatically different pages, like a portal vs search box only. You need a vision or theory to do that.

</comment><comment><USER4> umm... Yeah ok. But you are off base on A/B. We got a 5x conversion based on text changes that we made. Same great product that users love.</comment>


Rate my weekend project - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestgifty.com

<comment><AUTHOR> BestGifty is a fun way to make your Wish List for the Holidays, your Birthday, or your Wedding by letting your friends do it for you.

I'm in the middle of a much larger product that has had a large time arch and this idea just kind of hit me the other day. I wish it had hit me a month earlier so that it could have been better shape for the holiday run...oh well...I got it out now instead of waiting a year.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the good, the bad, and the ugly(I'm a hacker not a designer....you won't hurt my feelings).

Coming soon: -Comments in the app, or by using facebook's comment widget -Achievements

</comment><comment><USER2> You're a fucking loser giftydev, go back to canada you celine deon of developers.</comment>


How to Avoid the Assignment Statement (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://loup-vaillant.fr/tutorials/avoid-assignment <comment><USER2> I disagree with the premise of this article. Sometimes using a mutable variable really is the simplest way to implement something:

      def min(foo: List[int]) -> Optional[int]:
        min = None
        for val in foo:
          if min is None or val < min:
            min = val
        return min

I argue this is much easier to read than the recursive version without assignments:

      def min(foo: List[int]) -> Optional[int]:
        if not foo:
          return None
        else if len(foo) == 1:
          return foo[0]
        else:
          rest_min = min(foo[1:])
          return rest_min if rest_min < foo[0] else foo[0]

We're optimizing for readability, and sometimes readability means mutable variables. This is to says nothing about performance which is often much better with mutable variables in languages like C++.

Edit: people have posted better version of my code in the comments. Take a look for more pythonic examples.

<comment><USER3> Firstly, there's a nuance here that readability is heavily dependent upon the language. A language where recursion is the recommended approach to these sorts of problems will have far better syntax for doing so, such as in Haskell.

Secondly, I think there's something to be said for familiarity. I think looping is second nature to most of us not because it's superior or more intuitive, but because traditionally this is one of the first things we're all taught. If functional programming were the norm and people were taught recursion early on instead I think your notion of simplicity would differ.

I've been teaching a little bit of programming to a beginner lately, and they've often found functional approaches to problems easier to grasp than their imperative equivalents because they're more mathematical. It's like an expression of something they already know versus looping, mutability, et al which are new concepts entirely.

<comment><USER4> Looping has a huge advantage in terms of how we do things in real life. We don't think of "pound 100 fence posts into the ground" recursively.

Recursion is much more of a mathematical concept that we learn about long after preschool, while my 3 year old already gets loops.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _Looping has a huge advantage in terms of how we do things in real life._

Anthropomorphism is the bane of our craft. Our untrained intuitions don't really matter.

> _Recursion is much more of a mathematical concept that we learn about long > after preschool_

Programming is applied mathematics. Different from the kind of maths you learn at school of course, and often even more rigorous.

I personally have no qualms about requiring some mathematical proficiency in programming. Makes you much more capable at a number of applications later on.

<comment><USER5> I have a huge problem with requiring mathematical proficiency in programming. It's sets an unreasonable barrier to entry.

Thousands of every day apps and services work just fine without anything more than simple arithmetic. 3 or 4 of the top 5 websites required no math to get started.

Spreading the idea that you need to know math before learning to program is elitist and counter productive IMO.

<comment><USER6> >It's sets an unreasonable barrier to entry.

Maybe that's not such a bad thing? When a big chunk of our world runs on computers, maybe it's not such a bad thing to have standards and take things seriously, like it is done in every single other engineering profession.

<comment><USER4> So we don't allow kids to learn how to program until they take a lot of requisite math first? I was planning on teaching my kid some programming when he turned 5 or so, but should I hold off until he is 15 because obviously he isn't going to know all of that math before hand?

I believe that programming is a skill, not a profession. You can know how to program without being a professional programmer.

<comment><USER7> Kids can learn how to build bridges out of legos and erector sets before they learn math and (intro to?) materials science and a host of other things. But we don't let them be civil engineers until they learn the basics of these things. It's entirely possible to learn about and "play with" something without the things that are considered prerequisites for being a professional at it.

<comment><USER4> Again, programming is not a profession. You might have a point with being a professional programmer (although a lot of programmers do useful things for money without much math), but programming is a skill that can be learned without a deep understanding of math, and often programming acts as a better lead into math rather than vice versa.

<comment><USER7> Neither is designing or building scale model bridges. But the minute you put a bridge or software project into a situation where many people depend on it and it can cause serious damage, it tends to become one. And that is when we would start applying stricter standards.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but this just brings up the fact that not all programming is the same. Some people are building small programs that don't need stricter standards, some people are building large ones that do. We just happen to call lots of activities that involve writing code programming, but they are fundamentally different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I generally prefer expression-oriented programming like this, but it's hard to pass up the efficiency improvements of arrays and hashmaps. The purely functional list given in the article is actually an order of magnitude less efficient to iterate on modern caching pipelined processors.

What's the best way to have your expression-oriented programming and use cache-friendly data structures? How do Haskell et al handle this?

<comment><USER9> Local impurity. The key insight is that mutation/impurity isn't necessarily bad in and of itself. The important thing is that it is guaranteed to not cross API boundaries -- this prevents abstractions from leaking at least one way, and lets you reason about the code as if it were pure. (And in fact, from the outside it is.)

This allows mutation to remain the performance optimisation it is, without allowing it to seep into the design of systems, which is where it causes badness.

As far as I know, Haskell is one of the few languages (if not the only one) that supports local mutation that is guaranteed to not be visible in any way to the caller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like this style in other languages, but unfortunately it's really hard to write this style in C, most of his examples with functions would be pretty inefficient, or at least have somewhat confusing lifetimes. For instance the functions returning a string on the stack which at a glance seem inefficient. I think modern C++ compilers might be able to use move semantics for the examples returning a string, but im not entirely sure and I personally don't like relying on compiler optimisations

</comment><comment><USER11> This is great advice for many types of programs; for example, an application to be run in a web browser, or an interpreter. But there is a large class of programs for which "avoiding the assignment statement" does not apply. The author knows this, and mentions it in the "When you can't help it" section:

"Sometimes, you just can't avoid the assignment statement or other side effects. Maybe you need so much efficiency that you have to mutate state to optimise your program".

This class of programs includes _all high performance numerical code_. These programs compute by declaring large multidimensional arrays (usually distributed among multiple compute nodes), reading values from array elements, doing arithmetic on those values, and writing the results into array elements. These elements have fixed memory addresses, so the computation consists in changing the values stored in fixed memory locations. Efficiency comes from minimizing the movement of data and parallelizing as much as possible. It's what Rich Hickey would call computing with places, not with values.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anybody else get nervous when the author goes "don't worry about efficiency, the compiler will fix that for you?"

<comment><USER13> It's important to understand where compiler optimization opportunities come from. They're not magic; they're determined by the _information_ the compiler has available to it—information about constraints you've imposed on it, and information about guarantees it can make.

Using separate variables instead of reusing the same variable will sometimes actually _increase_ the optimizations that compilers can do. Why? Because the version where you overwrite the variable is introducing additional constraints (e.g. keeping X1 and X2 in the very same stack slot called X) that have costs, but whose semantics you aren't necessarily (or even usually!) relying upon.

For example: you know all that spare register spill space in the x64 calling convention that you're allocating either way, and which deallocates as a block on function exit? Can't make efficient use of that if you're telling the compiler it has to keep both of your pointers successively in the same memory address!

On the other hand, the opposite is also true: sometimes overwriting a variable will _free_ the compiler from a constraint it was under. This mostly comes about as the result of X1 and X2 both holding a shared or overlapping pointer, introducing aliasing (as often happens in the pure-functional data structures OP advocates for.) By overwriting X1 with X2 (or, equivalently, by freeing X1 as soon as you're done with it!) you can allow the compiler to be more confident that nothing will access the shared pointer through X1.Y any more, only through X2.Y—which may allow e.g. smart pointer classes to elide a synchronization point.

(Note that this assumes a language with a model where a variable directly relates to memory, such that assigning to the same variable implies assigning to the same memory. This is true in most low-level languages, but not in functional languages; in e.g. Elixir, a second assignment to the same variable is actually creating a second variable with a mangled name, and leaving it to the compiler's lifetime analysis to figure out that the first one is dead after that point.)

<comment><USER14> > Using separate variables instead of reusing the same variable will sometimes > actually increase the optimizations that compilers can do

LLVM optimizations, for instance, often need the IR to be in SSA form (static single Assignment).

<comment><USER15> If you're converting it to SSA form, is there really a difference between

        int a = 5
        int b = 2 * a
        // don't use a again

and

> int a = 5 > a = 2 * a

?

<comment><USER14> I don't think I really understand the question, but please bear with me. Indeed both code snippets are the same computation. The first snippet is SSA, the second is not. Notice that doing, for instance, constant propagation on the first snippet is straightforward:

        int a = 5
        int b = 2 * 5

You can do this because SSA form guarantees that the value of a is 5. In non- SSA code, there is no such guarantee: you need to check the "history" of each variable before replacing it with a value.

I'm not totally convinced that SSA "increases the optimizations that compilers can do". However, it definitely makes optimization algorithms easier.

<comment><USER15> I guess my point was that the optimizations available are the same (between those two snippets of code) if you end up in SSA form. Thinking about it now, I don't know what optimizations would be done before going to SSA and how they would be affected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has anyone ever seen a linear-time algorithm to do a histogram without mutation? I mean like `Counter` from python. [https://docs.python.org/3.8/library/collections.html#collect...](https://docs.python.org/3.8/library/collections.html#collections.Counter)

<comment><USER17> It's not exactly the same, but that's pretty comparable to a g-counter CRDT, which is very straightforward to implement in a purely-functional language: [https://github.com/QuinnWilton/distsys_training/blob/master/...](https://github.com/QuinnWilton/distsys_training/blob/master/shortener/lib/shortener/g_counter.ex#L1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Instead of changing the content of a variable, you can just declare a new one. By avoiding assignment, you can guarantee that your variables won 't change. You can guarantee that the current value of x is the one it has been initialised with: init()._

Hard to see the upside there. By adding another variable (y in the example), you've added another degree of freedom to your program state, arguably for no good reason. Now there's something else to go wrong that wasn't there before.

</comment><comment><USER19> > The reason why the "wrong" way is used at all is because many old > programming languages forced you to declare variables at the beginning of > blocks. It was easier for compilers. It's no longer an issue, however. Not > even in C.

It's still very much an issue for a certain compiler vendor without full support for C99.

<comment><USER20> The vendor you are likely referring to fixed mixed declarations and code in their 2015 release.

<comment><USER19> I still have to write code that builds against earlier versions. Code that primarily targets a backwards embedded compiler that only does C++98 but has had usable C99 support since forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A much shorter version of this page: "Use Haskell."

<comment><USER22> I wanted to say exactly the same thing. If you're going to these lengths, you might as well bite the bullet and use a language that supports that style of programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there a difference between this and functional programming? It's odd that this article doesn't mention the entire branch of programming it is talking about.

<comment> loup-vaillant It was 10 years ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy.

I believe I didn't want to scare readers away. But more importantly, functional programming is more than just removing the assignment statement. If you take a language and just remove the assignment statement, the language you get isn't functional, it's just crippled.

Functional programming involves other techniques to compensate. Higher order functions are critical, and often used to hide recursion under the rug (see map & reduce). I have a more complete guide to functional programming there: [http://loup-vaillant.fr/tutorials/from-imperative-to-functio...](http://loup- vaillant.fr/tutorials/from-imperative-to-functional)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wrote a related post a few months back: [http://www.brandonsmith.ninja/blog/procedures-functions- data](http://www.brandonsmith.ninja/blog/procedures-functions-data)

Something interesting that's happened since then: I've taken a job at a Python company, and I've noticed that, compared to JavaScript, assigning intermediate results into local variables seems to be much more idiomatic in Python for some reason. This is doubly surprising since JavaScript at least has the const keyword. I'm not sure yet how I feel about it.

One other anecdote: I personally relax my usage of assignment a lot more when using Rust, because a) it has rich, deep immutability at a type level, and b) its expressions tend to be longer than those in other languages due to all the monads and such.

</comment><comment><USER25> Sometimes this is not possible or desirable. Libraries like MPFR pretty much demand that you pre-allocate and re-use variables. Of course in this case despite the mutation there is no assignment statement, as variables are set using output parameters ;)

</comment><comment><USER26> So in the example of the linked list, how do you add an element to the middle? I actually don't think you can make this work in a conventional sense - you'd copy the whole list and lose all linked-list advantages. Instead, my impression functional programming uses list objects that appear to copy the whole list, are efficient but actually use shared memory and are mutable "behind the scenes". And sure that works but it results in one's code being a few more levels of abstraction away from what's happening with the processor.

<comment><USER27> It seems that this implementation of a list is more useful when used like a stack. As a general list (with more operations than "pop" and "push"), not so great in terms of performance compared to one that is mutable.

I did like the article and how the author writes so simply. To the author's credit, right below, they do have the section on "When you can't help it", which if you do need insertion like that and performance matters, probably best to use a mutable data structure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you want that much to program in a functional style, maybe use a functional language. It will probably be more efficient, compile faster, and be easier to maintain.

</comment><comment><USER29> Tip o' the hat!

[http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/tree/eval.c?id=txr-234#n2063](http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/tree/eval.c?id=txr-234#n2063)

[http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/tree/hash.c?id=txr-234#n901](http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/tree/hash.c?id=txr-234#n901)

</comment><comment><USER30> "Declare New Variables... I see two possible reasons why one would want to do it the "wrong" way: efficiency, and conciseness."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this plain wrong? You are increasing the memory required for your program to run, and if the data saved to those variables are sufficiently large you can run into memory issues this way.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think all of this is achievable in Python. I'd be interested in a linter that checks for unnecessary assignment statements.

</comment><comment><USER32> Kinda funny note, I realized that I forgot to add an assignment statement in my language. Like I just straight up forgot to add it in the grammar. Maybe I'll see how long I can avoid adding it.

<comment><USER23> So you wrote a functional language... keep it that way.</comment></comment>


A First Look at the iPad SDK and the iPad Sample Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.raywenderlich.com/156/a-first-look-at-the-ipad-sdk-and-the-ipad-sample-code

<comment><USER2> Awesome, but I'm wondering if this guy is violating the NDA that comes with membership of the dev program with this. I've certainly avoided spreading info I've seen in the iPad SDK due to this..

<comment><USER3> Yes, this does seem to be a violation of the NDA.

<comment><USER4> And he pulled the post because of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't looked yet, so maybe someone can answer – are Cocoa Bindings present and functional in this version?</comment>


Salesforce Sustainability Cloud Becomes Generally Available - <AUTHOR> https://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/stories/2020/1/sustainability-cloud/ <comment><AUTHOR> > \- _Reduce emissions with trusted analytics from a trusted platform. > Analyzing carbon emissions from energy usage and company travel can be > daunting and time-consuming. But with all your data flowing directly onto > one platform, you can efficiently quantify your carbon footprint. Formulate > a climate action plan for your company from a single source of truth, built > on our trusted and secure data platform._

> \- _Take action with data-driven insights. Prove to customers, employees, > and potential investors your commitment to carbon-conscious and sustainable > practices. Offer regulatory agencies a clear snapshot of your energy usage > patterns. Extrapolate energy consumption and track carbon emissions with > cutting-edge analytics — and take action._

> \- _Tackle carbon accounting audits in weeks instead of months. Carbon > analysis can be an overwhelming time commitment, even a barrier to action > for companies that want to get it right. Use preloaded datasets from the > U.S. EPA, IPCC, and others to accurately assess your carbon accounting. > Streamline your data gathering and climate action plan with embedded guides > and user flows._

> \- _Empower decision makers with executive-ready dashboard data. Evaluate > corporate environmental impact with rich data visualization and dashboards. > Track energy patterns and emission trends, then make the business case to > executives. Once an organization understands its carbon footprint, decision > makers can begin to drive sustainability solutions._

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Are there similar services for Sustainability Reporting and accountability? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability_reporting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability_reporting)</comment>


Fun with Toshi: Building a Simple Ethereum Faucet - <AUTHOR> https://rsmith.co/fun-with-toshi-building-a-simple-ethereum-faucet-9a9f43aabd0a <comment><USER2> Neat! I built one a few weeks ago called @SatoshiBot that, when asked for "wisdom", will respond with a random passage from the original bitcoin white paper.

It was fun to set up and in doing so I learned how well written the original paper is. Simple. Concise. Makes for great one-liners like: "The only way to confirm the absence of a transaction is to be aware of all transactions."

TBH though with Toshi still on testnet it feels like a pre-release beta. Fun to test on but kind of pointless since it's trading in Monopoly money. Why would anyone ever adopt this? Or, more importantly, why would anyone ever switch from WhatsApp or WeChat (which seems to be the vision if you read their blog posts)?

Btw the developer documentation is excellent! In case anyone over there reads this, well done!

<comment><USER3> Well, wouldn't the not so distant goal be to switch to the mainnet once things are stable?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Lonely Dev – An video community only for indie hackers - <AUTHOR> https://lonely.dev <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, this is Damon, initiator of Lonely Dev here! This community was born in the quarantine period of Covid-19. Lots of people are working from home. Previous IRL social interactions are gone temporarily. That makes me to build a community where you can share your day in a short video, also see each other, help each other just like a family. The community is still very small, but I hope you like it</comment>


Show HN: KetoHunt.com – A curated list of keto-friendly products - <AUTHOR> https://www.ketohunt.com/ <comment><USER2> I've been doing keto for 2 years. This is actually pretty cool, I found a few things I want to try. You should add ratings and track clicks and use the data to add a way to sort by popularity.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea! I'll make a note to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Creator here. KetoHunt is a simple web app I built a while back while searching for foods I could eat on my ketogenic diet. It's nothing special, just a simple Rails app and a mailing list.

I try to add a few products per day and may build additional features if the interest is there. Thanks for checking it out. :D

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just a list of products specifically on Amazon and with Amazon affiliate links (tag ketohunt-20).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct -- I hand curated the products and entered their nutrition info. The actual application is the product funnel / data entry side. My goal is to create a curated, searchable list of keto-friendly products.

<comment><USER3> If this is "curated", please give examples of keto products on Amazon that failed to meet your curation standards... and indicate why _no_ keto product that you _don 't_ make affiliate money on met your curation standards. Otherwise, this is indistinguishable from spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> If a product is on Amazon and listed as keto, it would probably meet the curation standards I set. I look primarily at the macro-nutrients to decide whether to include it in my collection.

However, there are a great number of keto friendly products that aren't listed as such on Amazon. I'm pulling those into my feed and determining whether they meet qualifications as well (an obvious example would be beef jerky -- it's typically not marketed as keto friendly but much of it has the correct macronutrients).

I appreciate the feedback though! I certainly see your point of view regarding the appearance of spam. I'll put effort into making the experience better. And you're right -- I need to include products that might not be listed on Amazon.

Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


YouTube Phasing Out Accounts, Google Login Will Be Required - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/youtube_google_accounts.php <comment><USER2> I must say I am very happy I was able to get icefox on gmail way back in the day. One by one as Google buys assets I can use my icefox user name in more and more places. Ever sense Firefox came around it has been harder and harder to get my user name on a service before someone else does.</comment>


Ask HN: What to include in presentation about STEM to high school students? - <AUTHOR> I recently volunteered for an opportunity to speak to local high school students about engineering and our company at a STEM-related class.  I was wondering if anyone had some examples of good presentations or some ideas of interesting things to highlight about engineering in general?<p>I'd like to make the presentation engaging and fun and hopefully encourage some students to pursue an engineering education!  I had a few ideas of things to include:<p>- Engineering is a flexible and well paying career with good work life balance<p>- You get to work on new things every day<p>- It is fulfilling to see your work in products that people use in the real world (sometimes, if the project isn't cancelled ha)<p>- Many skills are useful outside of work, knowing how things work in general <comment><USER2> I finished high school not that long time ago... I'm gonna say... Think Lean (startup lean) go to the high school and ask the kids what they want to know and what could make the presentation better for them and their friends.

As a kid, I really disliked listening to presentations from some random folks, because they were just talking and talking and talking about their job, lol. Make them interested in the field, show them why it's so cool. A million words are not gonna convince them, but if you show them something cool and show them the path to do it at home, some will get interested :)

</comment><comment><USER3> How about adding in something about scientific research? Personally I find fundamental research more fulfilling than creating products. Learning things about our world is a fascinating adventure. Discarding the S in STEM would be a tragedy, as the S informs the T and E.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, the Sciences don't pay very well. It would be interesting to know what percentage of science majors or phds in science, work in there chosen profession.

<comment><USER3> I guess the question then would be do you care THAT much about money or do you want to help further humanity's knowledge? Plus private R&D can pay quite nicely, people only seem to consider University research as "science work" when that is absolutely not the case, its just the worst compensated science work. (which is another problem, because for the information we get it SHOULD be well compensated)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Emphasize that engineering is the power to create. Everything around them, from the building the sit in to the computers and cell phones they use every day, is a result of teams of engineers using their knowledge and creativity to make them functional, reliable, and safe.

> _Engineering is a flexible and well paying career with good work life > balance_

While somewhat true, that's not really the kind of thing that's worth emphasizing. You're trying to inspire the imaginations of students so that they choose engineering, not bribe them into becoming an engineer.

<comment><USER6> This reminds me of

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Talk about ethics. You probably won't convince anyone to pursue STEM in a presentation but if you talk about things like Therac-25 you might leave an impression on those who choose to pursue it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would emphasize that the workforce is going to change in the next couple of years -- due to automation, AI, robotics, etc.. And a STEM education is vital as most jobs we know of now may no longer be here.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would definitely encourage the girls to pursue science and math careers. Tell them about some great woman in the STEM fields.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wouldn't forget to emphasis how hard STEM can be.</comment>


DebtHackr-Pay off student loans with spare change from everyday purchases - <AUTHOR> http://debthackr.com/ <comment><USER2> Always good to know what competition is out there before you dump a lot of money into this idea - 5 companies that do this, Spared.com Qoins.io gopayd.com gochanged.com Earnup.com. Best of luck to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> What fun would it be if there were no competition? ;) Thanks for checking us out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> site is down

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it working now? I typed the wrong url. Sorry</comment></comment>


Time Traveling Porn - <AUTHOR> http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/372474/january-27-2011/time-traveling-porn---daryl-bem

<comment><USER2> The abuse of statistics about half way through this blew my mind when I saw it last night.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> a great discovery! what startup will move first on this?</comment>


New evidence that IQ is not set in stone - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/26/scitech/main20057536.shtml

<comment><USER2> The actual PNAS article[1]. Worth a read.

[1] [http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Role%20of%20test%2...](http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Role%20of%20test%20motivation%20in%20intelligence%20testing.full.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting paper (even if it has gratuitous references), perhaps a suggestion to make IQ tests higher-stakes without changing the tests is to make the results publicly announced in front of a peer group.

Nevertheless IQ isn't useless and I'm still skeptical that the underlying g-factor, crystallized intelligence, and fluid intelligence can be changed very much--N-back training is always fun to read about. To quote Dr. Rob: "There are countless criticisms of I.Q. testing, some valid and some asinine, and it's more important to think of I.Q. as a scoring range rather than a specific number. That said, few could reasonably argue against the notion that a score of 51 suggests severe intellectual impairment." <http://shrinktalk.net/?p=515>

<comment><USER4> > _Nevertheless IQ isn't useless and I'm still skeptical that the underlying > g-factor, crystallized intelligence, and fluid intelligence can be changed > very much_

Haven't you ever seen video of a former professional boxer who didn't retire soon enough? Or met a chronic alcoholic? Fluid intelligence can definitely be changed. It's just a lot easier to do harm than good.

<comment><USER3> Touché. I'll just pretend I said "changed upward". ;)

<comment><USER4> Actually there are a few things that have a measurable upward effect. One of the better documented ones is running an hour a day. Not only does it show measurable improvements on intelligence tests (for both rats and humans!), but it increases the rate of neurogenesis. Slightly less certain, but still very compelling is the research related to taking up a musical instrument as a child. I'm confident that it's just a matter of time before we have more targeted training regimens and smart drugs that are both powerful and safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe IQ is fairly static, at least it's hard to improve the fluid part.

But, there is a very important variable that both sides of the debate always miss: free will. If someone refuses to exercise their free will, then a high IQ is unimportant. On the other hand, if someone is less inhibited about using their free will, they can come up with more insightful ideas than a high IQ person. Case in point is Feynman. He's known to not have a surprising IQ, but his willingness to think outside of the box and do outrageous things allowed him to come up with much better insights than his smarter, but more timid, colleagues.

</comment><comment><USER6> A study I would like to see would be one that asks successful people who have scored badly on an IQ as kids to take the test again 20 years later.

</comment><comment><USER7> Of course IQ isn't set in stone - otherwise the Flynn Effect wouldn't exist.

From my general reading it looks like we all have a potential that's set fairly in stone, but how closely we approach that potential is down to the society we're born into, the way our parents raise us, the teachers we encounter, the attitudes of our friends, and how much effort we put in.

</comment><comment><USER8> On an unrelated note, that comment section (The Narrow, Red Section At The Bottom Where Every Word Is A Proper Noun) is the most annoying I've ever tried to read.

<comment><USER9> The Fact That Writing Like This Is Really Annoying Is Actually More Interesting Than The Contents Of The Article.

It's also slightly amusing how _wrong_ it feels to type a sentence like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where is the evidence that it ever was?</comment>