What I've learned from 35 years of wearing computerized eyewear - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/steve-mann-my-augmediated-life? <comment><USER2> Steve Mann: Old-fashioned welding helmets use darkened glass for this. More modern ones use electronic shutters. Either way, the person welding merely gets a uniformly filtered view. The arc still looks uncomfortably bright, and the surrounding areas remain frustratingly dim.

Me: Hasn't this guy ever heard of HDR? He could have just used a couple of video cameras with some processing.

SM: A few years before this, I had returned to my original inspiration—better welding helmets—and built some that incorporated vision-enhancing technology. [...] These helmets exploit an image-processing technique I invented that is now commonly used to produce HDR (high-dynamic-range) photos.

Me: Oh. Right.

<comment><USER3> Steve is the kind of person that makes you question your assumptions about just about anything.

Doing a 'why does't he just' on him means you're going to have to do the equivalent of 6 months continuous reading first if you want to avoid making a fool out of yourself, so I wouldn't worry about not knowing about his connection to HDR.

Steve and I had some interesting exchanges back in '95 or so when video on the web was still a novelty. Steve went on to make history with his series of inventions.

What's extremely impressive to me is Steve's incredible faith in his own inventions, no clinical trials on others but dog-fooding in the extreme. Bolting things onto (and into) his body for attachment and augmenting his world. He's a real pioneer in every sense of the word.

<comment><USER4> Is this guy receiving any industry support? Is something he has invented availble to the public?

<comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why Google hasn't hired Steve Mann yet, at least as a consultant on the project. Seems like hubris to me: this guy has been testing wearable systems for 20 years or so and knows more about the experience than anyone on the planet.

<comment><USER6> Because Steve Mann is into wearable computers and google glass is not a wearable computer project. Your wondering this is understandable because google has mislead you. But glass has no CPU, there's not enough power or space for one. The intelligence lives on google servers where the speach recognition is done, and everything else, and glass is useless without a net connection (So you have to be in an area with wifi or have a smartphone handy to tether to.)

Steve Mann has been working on head mounted displays, true, but he's been focusing on local horsepower wearable computers.

Ultimately, I don't think google glass is anything more than a PR project to remove the stigma of google as ripoff artists and to make it look like they're innovative.

Given current technology, glass on wifi should have about 20 minutes of battery life, maybe an hour. Which makes them pretty useless.

There's really quite a difference between a wearable computer (what Mann works on) and a bluetooth headset with integrated display (what glass is.)

<comment><USER7> I agree with your post in it's entirety, except for the bit on battery life as I spoke to an engineer using Glass a few weeks ago and 5-6 hours with real world use was the toted number (for a mix of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth use).

I still feel that is very poor though, for Glass to really be useful it should last a long working day, and ideally all of your average waking hours.

It remains a bluetooth headset with integrated display and camera. The phone and some remote servers do the real work.

<comment><USER8> If 5-6 hours is the toted number, the real number is most likely close to 4 hours.

<comment><USER7> 7 hours was the toted number, 5-6 hours was what he said he got in real-world usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To me, google glasses is worth a buy for just only one reason: sousvelliance(or inverse survelliance).

When somebody crashed into your house, or you witnessed a crime taking progress, or remembering an important details related to business dealing, it just may be worth the 1500 dollars you spent to get a Google Glass.

Other application of google glass may provide utility on a daily basis. I can imagine getting 10 dollars worth of useful service from google glass everyday, and 5 dollars in security benefit for the surrounding society. Multiply that by 365 days which is 5475 USD in term of economic benefit every year. Don't forget to mention high value recordings such as record of criminal activities, abuse of authorities by cops.

(Of course, if you're too poor, than google glasses isn't worth 1500 USD even if it may be someday worth 1500 USD of value to you.)

<comment><USER10> Recording in a public place in generally legal, but recording a private conversation, like a business meeting, is more complex. The laws vary depending on state (in the U.S.), and some states require the consent of all participants. I'm not sure that I'd want to wear a device that would expose me to felony charges if I inadvertently recorded some sensitive conversation that I didn't have permission to record.

Also, private property owners (like store owners) can eject you for trying to record video on their premises. There are some places where recording devices will never be welcome, such as movie theaters, sporting events and workplaces that deal with confidential information (e.g., a doctor's or lawyer's office, or even a start-up company whose product wasn't yet announced).

And I'm pretty sure that even Google wouldn't be happy if all their employees wore these to work every day. Would your work colleagues or managers speak candidly with you if they knew that their every word might be getting recorded?

<comment><USER11> >Would your work colleagues or managers speak candidly with you if they knew that their every word might be getting recorded?

If I recall correctly, there's a light visible on the outside of the eyepiece (the lens part) that's on whenever recording is happening. There will be no question if recording is going on or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >The impact and fall injured my leg and also broke my wearable computing system, which normally overwrites its memory buffers and doesn't permanently record images. But as a result of the damage, it retained pictures of the car's license plate and driver, who was later identified and arrested thanks to this record of the incident.

This image retention also happened when he was attacked at a McDonald's in Paris last summer: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/steve-mann- attacked...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/steve-mann-attacked- paris-mcdonalds-digital-eye-glass-photos_n_1680263.html)

Here's his account: [http://eyetap.blogspot.com/2012/07/physical-assault-by- mcdon...](http://eyetap.blogspot.com/2012/07/physical-assault-by-mcdonalds- for.html)

As far as I know, nothing ever came of it (i.e. there were no charges or settlements).

<comment><USER13> Yes it seemed to me like he already used this excuse.

Yeah you don't have to worry my glass never record anything... well except when it's super convenient to me, then it magically break just at the right moment

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really wish someone would make an early-adopter version of his EyeTap v4/v5 and sell it.

Would I pay cost plus 50% for one? Absolutely. Up to and including car-level prices. This is HN, a startup, anyone?

<comment><USER15> I've been a follower of Steve's work since meeting him in '96 at work, and I can only echo your sentiments here. The EyeTap would be my preferred solution (compared to Glass, for example).

<comment><USER16> I've been planning to make one myself once the Microvision laser scanning displays got reasonable, but I've been waiting about...15 years for that? so it's probably a lost cause.

The area which I think would be super-interesting and easy would be pure audio mediated reality. Vision is hard, but I could do audio for $500. I have shooting earmuffs which essentially do this already -- they have microphones and speakers, and amplify soft sounds while attenuating loud sounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _The second issue, the eyestrain from trying to focus both eyes at different distances, is also one I overcame—more than 20 years ago! The trick is to arrange things so that the eye behind the mirror can focus at any distance and still see the display clearly._

Sounds like he has some great insights here. He's also known as 'the worlds first cyborg' (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann>), and the lonely trail he seemed to be on is now shifting to the mainstream.

<comment><USER18> Certainly not lonely, its a gimmick that gives him legitimacy in his professional field.

<comment><USER8> Uh, please. He has very real and legitimate contributions to his field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think eyestrain would be a factor if you're using these systems as an augmented display that's constantly on, but I don't think the point of these devices is to be constantly looking at them, but rather, to engage them as needed, otherwise, let them get out of the way.

His devices in the pictures are shown to get in between the eye and the external world, whereas, if you look at glass, the screen is up and out of your line of sight.

I think if your wearable tech display is always on and continuously visible, it'll be a problem, battery life will be negatively impacted, and the device will distract you constantly.

<comment><USER20> I think that the problems you mentioned are either obvious (clearly being on always will reduce battery life) or just require better design: if the device is distracting, it needs to be adjusted so that it isn't (as an example, it could usually be pass-through displaying only a tiny information panel out of the line of sight like Glass, and only expanding over the whole field when some special feature is activated. Being artificially limited to never being an overlay isn't better than being able to be both an overlay and also just an info panel.)

The author posits that Google placed the screen out of the line of sight to avoid vision misalignment and misadjustment problems.

(Also, the eyestrain due to focus distances was mentioned, and apparently solved by using an "aremac": a pinhole camera in reverse which means the video is focused at every distance.)

<comment><USER21> The author actually says that Google's design _creates_ eyestrain by requiring viewing at a fixed focal distance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _As I went to speak with the driver, he threw the car into reverse and sped off, striking me and running over my right foot as I fell to the ground._

Probably because the driver was like "AAHHHHH!!!! A FREAKIN' CYBORG!!!!"

<comment><USER23> Thought the exact same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> All I really want from computerized eyewear is telemetry for sports.

Current time/pace/distance/route/whatever when I'm running.

Current speed, next corner severity/distance when I'm longboarding. ([http://swizec.com/blog/ifihadglass-the-app-i-want-to- build/s...](http://swizec.com/blog/ifihadglass-the-app-i-want-to- build/swizec/6035))

That alone would be worth the money to me. Such things already exist for skiing goggles, but those aren't extensible and only really fit one sport. So that's no good.

<comment><USER25> All I really want is a network connection, an 80 chars wide Emacs terminal in the window and a chording keyboard strapped to my hand. This assumes a small Linux (BSD?) distro installed. The rest is trivial.

(Iirc, this is a setup one of Mann's students had.)

Edit: OK, I do want a camera too. And video log. And... But 80+% of usability would come from Emacs lisp (or short scripts run from shell)

Edit 2: Love HN. I comment about a setup I read about years ago and have been waiting for buying the hardware -- and of course get answers (I assume that w/out employment contracts, they would have been more detailed). Thanks.

<comment><USER26> Remembrance Agent <http://www.remem.org/> was created by Bradley Rhodes, one of the group of "cyborgs" doing wearable computing research at MIT at that time.

... and after a quick search, it looks like he works at the Google, most likely on Glass.

<comment><USER27> I've actually worked with the Thad Starner and the Remembrance Agent before. Let me tell you, it's even cooler than it looks.

Of note, there's a version of the RA that has additions that make it more suitable for use on wearable computers. The first item in the papers section (Using Physical Context..., 2003) describes all the extra stuff that the wearable version does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Visual perception is truly an amazing thing! The author's anecdotes about vision alteration and the brain's ability to adapt were very interesting to me. I have nystagmus: my eyes move back and forth quickly all the time. I've often wondered what it looks like to see without the movement; however, that _is_ how I see: I don't notice the movement at all. My vision with contacts doesn't get much better than 20/40, so I do experience the effects of the movement. I tend to think of my vision as if it's an example of two-point wave interference: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_(wave_propagation)> The further away an image is from my focal points, the more the interference from movement affects my brain's ability to piece it all together; it's similar to tunnel vision, but instead of darkness on the periphery, it's progressively more blur. To see most clearly, I have to tilt my head to the side, to my "null point" where my eyes move the least. Not to mention my head moves often in some sort of sync with my eyes, especially while reading; once in school, a substitute teacher raised his voice angrily, thinking I was shaking my head at his work on the board!

I'm curious how Google and other developers of high-tech eyewear will account for us with out-of-the-ordinary eye conditions. If the glasses or certain apps rely on eye movements for communication, we probably couldn't use them.

</comment><comment><USER29> > But as a result of the damage, it retained pictures of the car's license > plate and driver, who was later identified and arrested thanks to this > record of the incident.

[McDonald's assault]: > when the computer is damaged, e.g. by falling and hitting the ground (or by a physical assault), buffered pictures for processing remain in its memory, and are not overwritten with new ones by the then non-functioning computer vision system.

Fragile design or, say, accelerometer-controlled backup memory?

</comment><comment><USER30> Reliant: Steve Mann wrote "Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass" [1], back in July 2012. Speaks to the stigma Google Glass is likely to face.

[1] [http://eyetap.blogspot.ca/2012/07/physical-assault-by- mcdona...](http://eyetap.blogspot.ca/2012/07/physical-assault-by-mcdonalds- for.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder how much wearing a contraption on his head contributed to his getting hit by the car. Even state of the art high-end viewfinders with millions of pixels have frustratingly long lag, enough to easily take away the reaction speed edge gained from millions of years of evolution.

<comment> wes-exp Besides lag, computerized vision could be seriously distracting. People already nearly get hit by cars staring into their smartphones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > _What I've learned from 35 years of wearing computerized eyewear_

Apparently nothing about fashion?

<comment><USER33> i don't know why Google doesn't team up with some lead designers in the eyeglasses and sunglasses business, and come up with some actual _stylish_ shades for Google Glass. Maybe they just aren't at that stage yet.

<comment><USER34> They apparently are: [http://www.fastcompany.com/3006116/where-are-they- now/google...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3006116/where-are-they-now/google- glass-warby-parker-frame-help-design)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> (In the far future) if Google Glass could automatically upload video of what you're seeing to your cloud storage, you could have a searchable log of your entire life.

Reminds me of these projects:

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

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

Maybe a V1 of this could have Google Glass take a photo every minute. You could upload it automatically to Evernote or your private G+ photo feed. Then, you could occasionally review and "star" the important moments of your life (and maybe even delete/summarize chunks that are less important).

<comment><USER35> > you could have a searchable log of your entire life.

Obligatory sci-fi cautionary tale: [http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black- mirror/episode-guid...](http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black- mirror/episode-guide/series-1/episode-3)

A circular buffer and explicit save is the furthest I'd want to take it.

<comment><USER36> As much as I enjoyed watching Black Mirror bringing a piece of fiction into this kind of discussion early on is potentially highly problematic [1].

Consider what mentioning The Matrix or Terminator does to a discussion about AI. What Black Mirror's "The Entire History of You" [2] does to lifelogging resembles what those films do artificial intelligence for dramatic purposes. I highly recommend reading Less Wrong's article on this issue [1] for an in- depth discussion of this issue.

[1] [http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generaliza...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generalization_from/)

[2] Trailer: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bFCqK81s7Y>, plot summary (spoilers): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_%28TV_series%29#S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_%28TV_series%29#Series_1).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Couldn't the fashion problem be solved by making hats cool again. Already some hipsters are wearing them, should provide plenty of space for hiding computing gear. Perhaps even the projector into the eye could be hidden in the rim of the hat?

</comment><comment><USER38> EyeTap, and this: [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/scientists- uncover-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/scientists-uncover- invisible-motion-in-video/)

I would pay for this. I would pay a lot.

</comment><comment><USER39> The pinhole aremac idea is so elegant! Infinite field of view and no need to measure the eye's lens. I wonder if video games and head-mounted displays designed for gaming will one day take advantage of that.

<comment><USER40> I hope so.

It seems the Occulus Rift does not have anything similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Apart from the potential physiological issues, the author briefly touches on the sociological impact this may have. In my mind that will be even more profound.

If you haven't seen it, 'Black Mirror' on TV here in the UK has an excellent episode where nearly everyone (voluntarily) has an implant which records everything they see.

Well worth a watch _:<http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black- mirror/4od#3327868>

_not sure how available this is outside the UK. It's called 'The Entire History of You'

</comment><comment><USER42> This guy looks amazing, though he can hardly lament that lessons were not learned if be did not participate in the commercialization of the technology.

Why is this guy not consulting for Google? And I'm not sure if I'm more astounded or thankful that he has not patents his research.

</comment><comment><USER43> 35 years? means we won't hear about any entertainingly silly patent claims?

</comment><comment><USER44> Computerized eyewear like Google Glass will kill the jobs of Rally Co-Drivers!

<comment><USER45> Interesting idea, but rally drivers probably wouldn't want a level of distraction in their eye line. Vehicular HUDs have been around for a while now, so they could have adopted it a while back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I spend several thousand dollars testing a few "eyesight for the blind" products by taking video on a head mounted camera, encoding the image as an 1 image per second audio file that is transmitted to the ears. I was actually able to get it to work as advertised, and I believe that given 10 hours a day practice for a month, you could detect a sense of depth perception and make out attributes in your environment through your audio cortex enough to walk around slowly without bumping into things. I had the blind friend test out the best I could do, and although it was a technological marvel, he actually didn't like it because it made people ostracise him even MORE than him being blind. He can move around slowly without bumping into things much more fashionably with the system he already had, a stick, good hearing, touch, and memory.

So a few insights:

1\. If you are putting something in front of your eyes, or on your hat brim that looks like a hacked together bunch of cameras and wires and you wear it in public, there is millions of years of evolution causing people to ostracise you. It's so bad, that a blind person told me: "The ostracism from wearing it is worse than the ostracism from them realizing your blind."

2\. You think you're confidant and can handle it? You aren't, inside you are millions of years of evolution to remove what is causing the ostracism. If you are the kind of person who can choose to remain single and lonely for life when you burn with passion for the opposite sex, then you have the kind of mettle it takes to wear cameras and wires on your head in public.

3\. The experience I had with converting visual to audio and using my audio cortex was tremendous. For example objects that "popped out" at me during audio-vision were completely different than normal vision. Take a brick wall for instance: I could hear the distance between the bricks (cement) was smaller in one spot, and larger in another spot because of an anomalous blip in the audio file. When looking at it visually, you think "meh", it's just a brick wall. With the audio file, the different brick leaps out at you as an anomaly. Thus exposing the data structure/algorithmic differences between the visual cortex and audio cortex.

Doing visual as audio makes you an infant again, the tiniest changes in things leap out as fascinating. This experience I had could probably be sold to people bored to tears with life. A billion dollar idea! Be an infant again.

<comment><USER47> My intuition is that this is only true insofar as sensory augmentation up to this point has been mostly useless. The reason you don't see delivery people or mechanics or whoever with headgear isn't because it's dorky (although of course it is), but because it just doesn't help that much. We live in a world that has been very well designed for people with the usual basic senses, so adding more on doesn't give you that much more information.[0]

So miniaturization is important, but I think the real improvements to be made are in software. In the coming era, these devices are going to start offering real-world superpowers. People who never forget a face, or where they put their keys, or _anything_ really. People who can have a quiet conversation in a noisy room. People who can do basic computing tasks _subconsciously_ while having a conversation. People with "spider-sense" who never seem surprised by anything.

These tools will still _look_ dorky, but the advantages they offer will be so great that the people who do use them will be very cool regardless.

[0] And I'd augment this claim by noting two examples off the top of my head of people who _do_ use these technologies professionally: surgeons and fighter pilots. Both of those jobs involve doing unfathomably difficult things human beings are incredibly unsuited to do, so they will take every advantage they can get, hang the cost and the aesthetic.

<comment><USER48> Brainport seems to be the most useful kind of sensory technology available. Giving you the ability to 'see' all kinds of different inputs, such as radar, sonar, UV, vision, balance, etc.

The only problem is that it requires your tongue. And your tongue is where you talk and eat. Once we can overcome this problem, there are huge implications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the record, this guy has been wearing actual computers.

Google glass is an accessory- essentially a bluetooth headset, display and camera built into glasses. The intelligence lives on the servers, and glass needs a bluetooth or wifi connection to talk to the net.

I think google's engaging in a bit of a PR swindle by making people think google glass is like an iPhone. It isn't, it _needs_ and iPhone or android phone to connect to the net.

Consequently it can't replace a smartphone.

I'm also pretty dubious about the battery time it will get, even without having to run a local CPU.

<comment><USER49> When did Google try to make people think that?

<comment><USER50> When reading comments by nirvana you need to realise that anything done by Apple is good, and anything done by anyone not Apple (but especially MS, Google, and Samsung) is stupid, or evil, or crooked, a dumb.

"Google is trying to swindle people with dishonest PR stunts" translates into "Google is doing the normal pr stunts that every company attempt; there are problems with most pr."

In 1998 researchers with a 1000 subjects found a 93% confidence of predicting whether a comment was made by nirvana or not nirvana just from reading the post, based on phrasing such as "the real reality distortion field".

<comment><USER51> I could get a higher confidence just by guessing "not nirvana" all the time ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I don't think the article said what the man's purpose was though (the one who crashed into his home and hurt him badly).

</comment><comment><USER53> this has to go front page!</comment>


The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences (1960) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html <comment><USER2> A thread from 2019: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19588971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19588971)

2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13954804](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13954804)

2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8520610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8520610)

A bit from 2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2421855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2421855)

</comment><comment><USER3> Could we "just" be carving the aspects of reality that math can model? I mean perhaps math is very effective in explaining what it can explain and we developed a blind spot for what it can't explain?

<comment><USER4> That's true, but I suspect the aspects that math can't model are either known to be intractable problems (e.g. modelling turbulence, Navier-Stokes), or otherwise have been delegated to other fields like philosophy or the humanities.

So I don't think there are physical aspects of reality that we are missing out on because they cannot be modeled using math.

However, the social and historical aspect of science is undoubtedly incredibly important, as well as the selection of the scope of science. These aspects of reality might be underrepresented.

To be more concrete, perhaps in 50 years we'll have doctors who specialize in "suburban salaryman kidneys," because the scope of study will expand from just the internal organs, to the internal organs, together with the external environment and social conditions.

We're already sorta there. A physiologist would conduct research on specific organs and systems, while a general practitioner/family medicine doctor takes your history (i.e. considers the social and historical conditions that lead to illness)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note that this article dates from February 1960.</comment>


On Choosing a Grad School, a Dialogue - <AUTHOR> http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/04/15/on-choosing-a-graduate-school-a-dialogue/

<comment><USER2> Heh, awesome. Speaking of which, did anyone else decide to go to grad school this year?</comment>


Semantic web apps: for linking people or data? - <AUTHOR>

Is a semantic web app better for linking data or people, or both across the web?<p>http://www.webepags.com <comment><USER2> Both! Also things.</comment>


The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Genius (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201205/the-mysterious-case-the-vanishing-genius <comment><USER2> Aha--this story triggered her coming back to her family: [http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/05/missing-biologist- surfa...](http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/05/missing-biologist-surfaces- reunites-with-family.html)

<comment><USER3> So strange that it had a happy ending, of sorts. I read this sort of thing and assume the worst.

If anything, I'm more curious about her life now: what's it like to come back after something like that, what was she doing in the meantime, does she retain her flair for research, or even hold those sorts of pursuits in any kind of regard?

Maybe this is what it's like to enjoy biographies _shrug_

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't so much say a happy ending. The article about her returning speaks about her desire to not burden anyone in her life with her physical pain and instead suffered through poverty.

"Unable to work because of it and subsequent injuries, she had long lived in poverty, sustained largely by the religion she had come to early in the decade."

I wonder what religion this is. One is quick to think Scientology, but to make such an assumption is too quick and heavy-handed I fear. It seems to be the best outcome, but not one that is pleasant at all.

<comment><USER5> That would be the last religion I would expect to financially support an individual absent any work. Especially considering the widespread critiques by past members pointing to the fact it's a pay-to-play type of arrangement. Unless of course she reached some high ranking hierarchy before becoming dependent.

Otherwise there are countless religions which fit this category in the US. Many with a strong history in running almshouses: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almshouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almshouse)

<comment><USER4> Oh dear! I've just realized that she was sustained _by_ her religion, I thought her religion was creating the poverty!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I find very interesting is that it seems like she suffered from rather severe mental illness, but (IMHO) because of how society has responded to mental illnesses over the past few hundred years, even the people she worked with and her family were very reluctant to talk about it. "Karen [her mother] declined to discuss Profet's behavior or psychological state." It seems the shame of mental illness itself may have lead to some of her problems, and maybe have dissuaded her from getting help earlier. At the same time, she did seem to reach out for some help, but I guess it just wasn't enough.

Even more so, it seems like her own family may feel this shame or be in denial if you look at the Nature link [0] provided by wglb. Her mother claims it was "physical" pain that drove her away, and caused her poverty, and that religion "sustained" her. Physical pain does not typically mean you stop talking to your family and friends for decades. And never mind the fact that she claims that her daughter didn't know people were looking for her. This quote from the original article I also found interesting about her disappearance and the family's response. ""I've found their reaction to her disappearance odd," Eubanks says." It doesn't give any actual details, but just an odd comment for someone to make, and even odder to add it in the article.

It's good that she's back with her family, and hopefully receiving the care she needs, but the family's response opens up more questions to me than answers.

[edited to add: This seems a bit conspiratorially in retrospect, unintended. The only real point I was trying to make is how our view of mental illness plays a large role in how the mentally ill deal with their illnesses.]

[0] provided by wlgb [http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/05/missing-biologist- surfa...](http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/05/missing-biologist-surfaces- reunites-with-family.html)

<comment><USER7> They could simply be retelling the story as told by their child. A respectful thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's some irony in that her best biological scientific work was developing theories that internally generated pain (menstruation, allergies, etc) is an adaptive feature, and then some kind of internally generated pain drove her into hiding and suffering.

<comment><USER9> I don't know if I'd call allergies internally generated pain. More like your body's response to an irritant (i.e allergen).

<comment><USER10> It's not just a response, it's an over response. When we say people have "an allergy" we do not mean that they are uniquely vulnerable to an irritant and their body must compensate for it, we mean their body unnecessarily responds to a benign marker.

<comment><USER11> It may not be an over-response at all. It may be the exact right response.

<comment><USER12> Anecdotal, but in support:

I was diagnosed with chronic heavy metal poisoning [0][1]. I had developed almst asthma-like pollen allergy after an event that very likely contributed quite a bit all at once. Over the years I also got allergic to cats. Everything is completely gone now after years of chelation. The creation of additional "outflow" surely must have helped get the stuff out from the system overwhelmed by amounts it could not handle using its normal methods.

A tiny bit of my story, pieces of it posted on several occasions:

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17310648](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17310648) (in this thread, all my responses)

[1] [http://onibasu.com/archives/fdc/137355.html](http://onibasu.com/archives/fdc/137355.html) and [http://onibasu.com/archives/fdc/137356.html](http://onibasu.com/archives/fdc/137356.html) (list of things that improved/disappeared through chelation treatment) -- Psoriasis is missing from that list, that completely disappeared too, had it on both elbows since "forever"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana)</comment>


Fight Over Yahoo's Use of Flickr Photos - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/fight-over-flickrs-use-of-photos-1416875564-lMyQjAxMTA0OTIwNDkyODQwWj <comment><USER2> _"It ticked me off that somebody else is selling them when I was giving them away,"_

This is a really common. A person creates something and "licenses it freely" out of their own generosity, and then someone goes and profits from it.

It illustrates a very deep conflict that has existed, presumably since artists existed, but really came to the fore in the age of silicon. The first example I saw sort of "first hand" was Ward Christensen's XMODEM, which he made public domain, was being sold to the US Government by a contractor who was using it in their product.

The legal question is pretty clear, you license it such that others can legally profit from it and there isn't an issue from the point of view of the law.

But what is the moral question? I've asked people in this situation (having their free stuff resold) and they split almost 50/50 on the moral one, which is half say "If they are making a profit they should share it with me." and half land in the "Good for them, but if they ask for support I'm going to charge quintuple my normal rate."

Clearly a lot of issues can be avoided by being courteous, but it really does provide something of a litmus test of people's true feelings with respect to open source.

<comment><USER3> That's why creative commons share-alike exists. [1] Basically, you can use this freely as long as it's not for commercial purposes, and if you remix it in any way, then the result must be shared under the same license.

It solves the dilemma pretty well I think.

[1] [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- sa/3.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

<comment><USER4> Often its an issue of magnitude though. If someone wants to use a photo I've taken very small in the corner of a 200 page document, which forms part of a piece of work they have been paid by the government to do, its probably not objectionable. If someone however sells my software slightly tweaked and rebranded, its probably not OK.

There's a range of greys in there but the licencing is black and white.

<comment><USER5> Generic licenses like these _should_ be black and white, otherwise you'd get even more expectations mismatches.

Thankfully, nothing forces you to use only a single license for your work! The best system for those grey cases, in my opinion, would be to publish the work under a NC license, but then add a message like "contact me if you want to use this work commercially" and offer specific licenses for such uses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's important to read Creative Commons licenses carefully: some grant other people the right to make money off of your original work in ways you never envisioned, without any compensation to you.

Photographer Thomas Hawk wrote, correctly: "If you are going to license your photos Creative Commons with no restriction, then you ought to be prepared for this type of use. If it's not Flickr selling them, anyone else can, legally. If you are uncomfortable with this idea, then you should not use Creative Commons without any sort of restriction."[1]

The photographers who are now upset apparently never read those licenses. And they're irrevocable, according to Creative Commons itself[2], meaning there's no legal recourse if someone wants to sell coffee mugs or T-Shirts with your CC-BY or CC-BY-SA-licensed photos. To Yahoo's credit, they are voluntarily allowing photographers to opt-out.

(What's interesting is that of the 14 photographers interviewed by the WSJ in the linked article, 8 actually didn't care. I would have guessed that number would have been higher.)

This is a separate issue from the "handpicked" Flickr photos, with a 51% revenue split. The actual Yahoo announcement[3] says the handpicked rev-share option is "invite-only," so presumably photographers who opt-in are okay with the terms.

Legality aside, I suspect Yahoo will regret this move. Seems to me that the negatives outweigh the revenue (especially since anyone can also offer CC prints), and users may view it as at odds with Flickr's 2011 claim that "at Flickr, your photos are always yours." Also Google+ has better editing tools and free unlimited photo storage (for <=2048px, I think), so that might prompt folks to move their photos over.

[1] [http://thomashawk.com/2014/11/the-controversy-around- flickr-...](http://thomashawk.com/2014/11/the-controversy-around-flickr- selling-creative-commons-licensed-photos.html)

[2] [http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/10296](http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/10296)

[3] [https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en- us/72157649323144986/pa...](https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en- us/72157649323144986/page2/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Crash course in licenses for a lot of people, I don't know if Yahoo should be blamed for using licenses correctly.

Though it seems kind of under-handed that they're going to essentially forcefully profit from their own users. Why not give them 50% just out of good will? I would be very surprised to find out that Yahoo is depending on 100% of the cash they're getting from the sale of these photos (I'd imagine they have more lucrative pursuits)...

Also, this is probably an opportunity to create a site that caters to flicker users and allows them to sell their prints to people. And if you take only a small cut of the profit (let's say 10%) for access to the printing resources, you can make a lot of money.

<comment><USER8> I intentionally chose to make my pics available for commercial use. As long as I get attribution I don't really care. A reasonable number of them have been used for various purposes and that makes me happy. (I have a pic on a sign in a state park, which is neat!)

That said, I'm a little annoyed that the company hosting the images is now actively trying to making money on them. It's not what I imagined. It doesn't bother me enough to complain about it, but it does change my perception of the "deal" I have with Flickr.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's definitely chafing people the wrong way (to say the least), I'm just surprised Yahoo would think that was fine, to do to the people who keep their site alive.

If I had my stuff on flickr with that license, I probably wouldn't care either, but still it's bad PR they definitely don't need

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember, about 20 years ago, when some people started making and selling Linux CDs (Walnut Creek or some others). Some people on the Linux mailing list (or newsgroup, my recollection is only approximate) were upset that some people were making money with their work (or with other people works, here again my recollection is approximate).

Then Linus said: that's fine. And then, over the years, a billion dollar industry emerged.

Except for the fact that I don't expect a billion dollar photo printing industry to emerge from the CC-licensed pictures hosted by yahoo, 500px and others, I think we have a similar situation here.

Maybe if Lawrence Lessig wrote something about the situation, this would help a bit, though I don't think Lessig has the same aura over the amateur photographers (after all, he is only the guy who wrote the license) than Linus over the kernel afficionados.

</comment><comment><USER10> Flickr gives anyone the ability to bulk change the license on their images to one that doesn't include commercial use. Just go to this page:

[https://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/license/?from=privacy](https://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/license/?from=privacy)

Clearly the users that are upset didn't really understand the license that they chose.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but once you've licensed the images under a certain CC license, you can't really go back. Yahoo will probably obey the user choice (as I think they should) but legally aren't under any obligation to do so.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure. The user owns the content. If they decide to change the license then Yahoo has to pull those photos from the pool.

<comment><USER5> Nope. That's the "irrevocable" part of the CC licenses (as well as in most FOSS licenses).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought you had to explicitly pick a license when uploading to flickr, I guess the photographers in this article must have randomly clicked on a non-NC CC license without understanding their actions? It's not like this is hidden away in some 100 page T&C?

<comment><USER14> Stupidity. Licenses are hard to understand in general, but they almost certainly said "Creative Commons, Commercial Use, Attribution"

And then when somebody comes along and takes them up exactly on that offer and they get offended: "That's not what I meant... I didn't know somebody would actually do it... Gosh golly, those evil corporations are doing exactly what I told them they could do... It's not right! This is what's wrong with America!"

I think it would have been good/better to reach out to people, give them a chance to opt-out if they weren't cool with it, but it could be nice to view flickr as not just images on the screen but potentially images on the wall too because there is some really nice stuff out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you don't want someone using your photos for commercial use, choose a license that says that. I was expecting an article where Yahoo was using these photos without permission (ala Facebook advertising) but this is just a case of someone who didn't read the license details when she posted the photos to the Creative Commons album.

</comment><comment><USER16> tl;dr: People who gave permission to use photos in certain ways upset that others use photos in those ways.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand the CC options offered by Flickr. I personally don't see any Commercial options. Here are the options I see:

\- None (All rights reserved)

\- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons (my default option)

\- Attribution-NonCommercial Creative Commons

\- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons

\- Attribution Creative Commons

\- Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons

\- Attribution-NoDerivs Creative Commons

\- Attribution-NonCommercial Creative Commons

Which one is the commercial one?

BTW: You can reset the license on your entire photostream by doing a batch reset: [https://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/license/batch/](https://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/license/batch/)

<comment><USER17> It's the ones that don't say NonCommercial.

And I think that's the real problem, they're poorly named. They should explicitly say Commercial.

Creative Commons made an ideological decision to make Commercial licenses the default, and they promote them as "Free Cultural Works" to make them sound more appealing.

<comment><USER5> _Creative Commons made an ideological decision to make Commercial licenses the default_

Of course they did. They also made an ideological decision in creating the licenses in the first place. This connotation of "ideological" with "bad" is obnoxious.

 _they promote them as "Free Cultural Works" to make them sound more appealing._

Yeah, just like people say "free speech" even though you often have to pay to get your speech across.

Or maybe it's not about money at all.

But I'm sure you were just unaware of that. It's not like HN talks about it every other month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> shawn-furyan I think it's absolutely appropriate for people to complain about free riders on CC licenses. It's pretty clear that most people who use CC licenses mean to promote creative reuse of their works by the broader creative community. An implicit, if not legally mandated, requirement for reuse in many cases is that you add something to the work.

Clearly, just selling prints en mass is mechanical enough that it fails to meet many people's personal threshold for what constitutes a creative addition. But practically speaking, it's impossible to add a legal definition of "creative addition" without just creating an explicit list of creative augmentations. Such a formulation would necessarily defeat any novel creative forms, and so such a formulation is antithetical to the ideals behind Creative Commons. So, enforcement must be relegated to the realm of social norms.

That's what's going on here. Creators are saying Yahoo are being jerks for using using their works in a way that meet the letter of the license, but not the spirit.

<comment><USER18> I think many free content creators would disagree with you on what the spirit of cc-by is.

<comment> shawn-furyan Hmm... that very well may be, and it even strikes me as probable. The nebulousness of the expectations regarding what CC means, and should mean is central to this entire episode. Part of the reason that CC exists is that copyright makes it difficult to share your work without either just giving it completely away, or striking explicit deals on an ad hoc basis. CC was a partial solution, but it's not really high resolution enough to satisfy everyone's needs and/or expectations in such dynamic and diverse areas as the pursuits of art.

That's why I say that social norm is an appropriate companion to CC here, because the formation of social norms allow for nuance that one size fits most CC licensing really doesn't.

Further, independent artists are typically going to be at a large disadvantage when trying to enforce licenses against large institutions, so to the extent that it is used by small independents, it's in many ways a system that relies on generally charitable intentions all around. I'm sure there are examples of independents taking on larger organizations, but I suspect that if it becomes clear that the only way to get what you want out of a CC license is to adopt a litigious stance, then it's adoption would decline pretty dramatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Props to the article author for including the opinions of some photographers who were fine with Yahoo's usage of their pictures. It would have been very easy to create a hit piece which only included quotes from people who were offended by the operation.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder what's stopping anyone from slurping up all Flickr's CC-licensed photos and beating Yahoo at their own game. Certainly not copyright law.

</comment><comment><USER21> What is the opposite of the Midas Touch? Whatever it is, Yahoo has it, at least with the things it has purchased.

<comment><USER22> Judas kiss.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_of_Judas](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_of_Judas)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This should be a reminder to many that 'there is no such thing as a free lunch'.

<comment><USER24> ...only free beer</comment></comment>


Create and delete branches - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1377-create-and-delete-branches <comment><USER2> Suddenly I can clearly see what must be one of Github's long-term goals: to make git usable end-to-end in the browser, and in a way where that is preferable for certain situations.

We're going to continue spending more and more of our computer time in the browser. It's the universal platform.

<comment><USER3> Git in the browser is _exactly_ what we need to bring git outside programming circles.

What I've wanted for a while is a site where I could fork somebody's muffin recipe, fix stuff and so on ... I've even considered building a site like that, but how many people who cook are also handy enough with a console to make that viable? My guess is not many.

<comment><USER2> Hahah, recipes are actually a very interesting application. A program is much like a recipe, after all. I could see a collaborative site where you build up a personal cookbook by forking and trying out other peoples' stuff and contributing your own modifications, etc.

<comment><USER4> If you think recipes are like code, you should look at knitting patterns sometime. It looks like assembly code to me.

<comment><USER5> I have a grandmother who can debug knitting patterns.

The patterns in the books are, apparently, sometimes wrong somehow. She debugs them when she knits.

I can only imagine _every_ competent knitter can, if only because those books must sell to a huge number of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My gut reaction to this was negative. As much as I like GitHub, I sympathise a lot with Linus Torvalds' concerns about the way it encourages low-quality pull requests [1].

However, thinking back through my own experiences with the kind of minor pull requests I've occasionally made to projects in the past, I can see this being quite useful. Have you ever actually cloned a big repo like the kernel's? Even the Node.js repo takes a fair old while. If you're just trying to submit a correction for a minor typo or omission in the project's README, then this feature lowers the barrier from minutes to seconds. Hopefully that will be a net positive for the community.

[1] [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56599...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5659933)

<comment><USER7> Why do you sympathize with his concerns? As valid as they are for the kernel they aren't for most of the projects hosted on GitHub. Most people are happy to get a pull request at all, and when they get one it's usually some trivial fix they can merge automatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slight self promotion; here is a CLI tool I made to help clear up local and remote branches easily - in case it is still useful to people:

<https://github.com/elliottcarlson/git-delete-branch>

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't believe it. I was looking for this functionality just yesterday and now here it is.

</comment><comment><USER10> Delete a branch in the UI, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER11> The create is nice, but the delete is absolutely essential. Thanks for implementing this.

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't forget to run `git fetch --prune` after someone deletes a remote branch.

</comment><comment><USER13> You guys are awesome! Thank you so much :)</comment>