Intermittent Fasting Is Gaining Acceptance - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/intermittent-fasting-diets-are-gaining-acceptance/ <comment><USER3> I'll add one more anecdote for IF. I've been doing it for 3 years and for me it's been the most effective way to get in and stay in shape. Coffee with a bit of milk or cream in the morning keeps me until 1-3pm (I've never gone full bulletproof coffee, but coffee definitely helps.) As others have mentioned, a run feels really good toward the end of the fast.

Heavy olympic lifting hasn't been a problem but I only lift on high calorie days, and not more than 4 times a week. If you are into the Leangains flavor of IF, lifting is _the_ recommended way to do IF. I find that in my and my gfs case, lifting has been far more effective than cardio.

I grew up with a mother as an aerobics instructor and I live in a very active Seattle, so I've seen and tried all number of diets and workout regimens. With IF I have the most energy and the fastest results. It's also reasonably easy to work into real life situations (travel, dinners at friends' houses, etc.).

I will say that using a calorie and exercise counter is very very helpful when starting or resuming IF. Otherwise it is far too easy to mis-estimate calories in or out. I use Fatsecret app. And to calculate target calorie in/out, there is a great tool here at 1percentedge [1]. (Unfortunately it's in Flash, contacting the author to port to a mobile app is on my long list...)

[1]: [http://www.1percentedge.com/ifcalc/](http://www.1percentedge.com/ifcalc/)

<comment><USER4> I do IF, with milk in my tea and coffee before lunch, and then break the fast at lunch time.

I think I better watch my milk input, particularly on non-lifting days (I'm a real amateur lifting), since it's probably bringing me out of "fasted" state according to my body. I drink a five cups of tea/coffee by lunch time.

<comment><USER5> In response to both of you, I really don't think that you have "fasted" in a particular period if you are consuming calories at all.

You're certainly restricting calories and I'm sure it's a positive step, healthwise, etc., but ...

If we have a goal of depleting the energy stores in our liver, you're interrupting (and perhaps) sabotaging that.

OR, if we are trying to restrict calories into a certain time window, you've opened up that window with the butter and the milk. You're no longer in the 16, you're in the 8 (so to speak).

<comment><USER3> It is a common misconception that any calories >0 break the fast. However, all IF coaches agree that the threshold for most people is around 50 calories [1]. Knowing this, I only take a splash of cream or milk in my coffee.

[1]: [http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread36172.html](http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread36172.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been doing IF (the "one meal per day" form) for a while now, mostly because I find it helps me focus during the day.

When I used to eat breakfast, I'd be productive in the morning, until I started getting distracted by craving lunch. Then I'd eat lunch, and end up sleepy and groggy afterwards while I digested.

Now that I'm used to IF, I feel more productive; I spend less time at work thinking about food, and I miss that whole post-lunch carb crash thing.

Obviously it's just anecdotal, possibly all psychosomatic, etc., etc. But I like it.

<comment><USER7> I'm with you. Breakfast has always felt very skippable for me. My body doesn't seem to crave it in any way. I'd grown up listening to the conventional wisdom: eat a hearty breakfast, or else you'll be so hungry you'll snack all morning and afternoon. But I never really found that to be the case. Really, I experienced the opposite effect, as you've described. Whenever I eat breakfast, I find myself hungry again anywhere from 30 to 60 mins later. When I don't eat breakfast, my hunger sort of quiets down and doesn't reemerge until later.

<comment><USER8> I basically never eat breakfast and see no negative effect, but when I tell people this they immediately get concerned about my wellbeing. The "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" idea is deeply ingrained in our culture.

<comment><USER9> A conspiracy theory states that breakfast is the most blah blah was invented by the agri-lobby to up the sales of cereal etc.

<comment><USER10> ""[I]n many ways, the breakfast is the most important meal of the day, because it is the meal that gets the day started," Lenna F. Cooper, B.S., writes in a 1917 issue of Good Health, the self-proclaimed "oldest health magazine in the world" edited by none other than Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the co-inventor of flaked cereal. "It should not be eaten hurriedly, and all the family, so far as possible, should partake of it together. And above all, it should be made up of easily digested foods, and balanced in such a way that the various food elements are present in the right proportions. It should not be a heavy meal, consisting of over five to seven hundred calories," Cooper's article continues.

Granted, Kellogg did hold an M.D. degree, but there's no denying he had a product to sell."

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/06/breakfast-most- impo...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/06/breakfast-most-important- history_n_5910054.html)

<comment><USER11> "It should not be a heavy meal, consisting of over five to seven hundred calories" is still good advice. That's about how big my breakfast is. Yes, I weigh it and count the calories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been following the 5:2 fast since Jan 1, and running 60-80 miles per week. I've run my 3 best marathons in this time, including a PR. (I'm not crediting the diet for this, just saying that the diet hasn't hurt my performance.)

I'm mostly doing it as an experiment for myself, after talking with a friend who did it last year, and watching the BBC Documentary on the diet (Eat, Fast, and Live Longer). I thought running on days that I partial fast would be unbearable, but I've felt fine. As well, on my non-fast days for the past two weeks, I'm trying to consume all my meals within 8 hours (1 PM - 9 PM).

I enjoy the discipline the diet requires. Also, somewhat like running a marathon, fasting days are a little bit about putting up with discomfort. I am definitely hungry toward the end of fasting days. Oddly, when I wake up the next morning my hunger has gone away, and I usually don't eat till 1 PM, as mentioned above.

Stats: 44 y/o male, 5'8", 140-145 lbs, down from 145-150. I'd like to be in the 135-140 range for racing purposes.

<comment><USER13> Your experience is interesting to me. I'm a runner as well and I end up doing several races per year including a marathon, a few 1/2s, few 5k and 10ks. Do you do any interval training or long runs on the days you fast? What do you do about post run nutrition replacement and do you do glucose replacement during your longer runs? I'd love to shave off a few pounds for racing reasons as well. I always find myself eating more as I up my milage anyway so my weight usually stays constant.

<comment><USER12> Fasting days (Mon/Wed) are recovery runs. I usually run long on the weekend, and do my workouts on Tue (intervals) and Thu (tempo), but before breaking my fast.

My Tue interval day may include a 12 mi AM run of 2 mi w/u, 8 x 1000M at 8K pace w/600M RI, 2 mi c/d and 4 mi PM recovery run. My Thu tempo is usually something like a 10 mi AM run of 2 mi w/u, 6 mi at HMP, 2 mi c/d, then possibly a 4 mi PM recovery run.

Sunday is my cheat day. But there's only so much ice cream you can eat in one day. :-)

During long runs, I usually carry 21 oz of sports drink.

Post-marathon recovery drink: Guinness Float (that would be Guinness draught and a scoop of vanilla.)

My plan this year is to run a marathon each month, and 3000 miles total. So far so good.

<comment><USER14> I have never heard of a Guiness Float before, but seeing as I like both Guiness and Coke Floats... I want to try it as soon as I stop my short-term keto diet! What's it like?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been doing Leangains style IF for the past four years. I'd like to share a few quick tips.

If anyone here wants to try intermittent fasting, do it for the sake of convenience. I don't eat breakfast or lunch, I just eat when I get home from work or after weight training. On weekends I break my fast earlier than on weekdays.

I wouldn't say you should do it for the "benefits" if it doesn't fit your lifestyle. Right now all we know is that it's not bad for you. It does work pretty well for hunger control, which can help if your goal is weight loss.

Also, don't live by the clock. It's OK to eat outside your feeding window, you might get hungry later during the day and the next day you might get hungry earlier.

Here's a guide if you're looking for a place to start: [http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains- guide.html](http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html)

Here's a good article if you have general questions about IF: [http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths- debun...](http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths- debunked.html)

<comment><USER16> > It's OK to eat outside your feeding window

Everybody's different, I use meal time and IF in part to limit what I eat. I have to because I love everything about eating, the taste, the feeling of eating, the socialising environment, etc. . I ccan eat anything at any time, and have a bottom less stomach.

<comment><USER15> Leangains IF assumes that you track your macros. I was just talking about your feeding window influencing hormonal entrainment (ghrelin).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For years I have been eating only evening meal, so I fast between 22 and 24 hours. I started doing this because it was very convenient for me to do so. I did not know anything about possible health benefits doing it, I was actually afraid to do any research if I would find out that eating only once a day was very dangerous and bad for you, but it fitted so well with my lifestyle that I wanted to continue no matter what.

A side effect is that I never feel really hungry anymore, even if I have been fasting for more than 25 hours. Before I could eat at noon and a few hours later be extremely hungry again. I really enjoy my evening meal complete with dessert, but I don't feel that deep hunger, almost pain, anymore.

Most of the time I only drink while eating and this can be a problem, especially in the summer and on the days I jog, as I can become very confused after not drinking for so many hours. As long as I stay hydrated everything is great, so I need to become better at that.

</comment><comment><USER18> Having done IF myself, where I would eat between noon and 8pm and skip breakfast during a 'cutting phase', my experience:

* 'IF' is great if you are "cutting" and trying to achieve a lower body weight or maybe just maintaining what you have.

* 'IF' is not good or practical if you are going through a traditional bulk phase

* The feeling of alertness, energy and maybe slight 'high' during the morning, is real.

* Not sure if it is better or worse at preserving muscle than just lowering your calories (and having 3-4 regular meals). I did lose some muscle mass (as well as body fat) when I did it.

The strongest point of intermittent fasting is that it is very easy to practice. Just skip breakfast, (and no snacks) and have full normal/regular meals between noon and 8pm.

<comment><USER19> I feel like IF would be detrimental to maintaining muscle mass during a cut. You really want to keep a steady stream of amino acids to prevent catabolism of muscle tissue even when reducing total caloric intake. Usually you cut fat first during a cut. You want to keep carbs to fuel your workouts and you want to keep the protein flowing to prevent muscle loss.

<comment><USER20> From my limited knowledge of human physiology .I don't think 24h is enough to trigger catabolism. You still have some fat reserves, and if you exercise/lift during the cut, you probably will even gain muscle. YMMV

<comment><USER21> The word "trigger" is not really useful in this situation because catabolism is not triggered, it just means muscle breakdown is happening at a higher rate than muscle synthesis (both of which are constant). This happens under a lot of different situations, and can temporarily go back and forth a lot. You certainly enter net catabolism long before your fat reserves are depleted (else cutting would be simple: just stop eating until you're pure hard muscle).

There are ways to temporarily spike muscle synthesis, and one of them is eating a protein rich meal. This specific mechanism has a refractory period in the order of magnitude of hours. Intermittent fasting robs you of the ability to spike muscle synthesis as many times per day as you could otherwise.

This effect is not massive. Your body is pretty good at optimizing this stuff. But when you are cutting, in particular, or trying to bulk without putting on significant fact, these minor optimizations can add up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Valter Longo's work is probably the most robust and human-targeted on this topic, since his group is trying to get fasting and calorie restriction past the FDA as an adjuvant treatment for cancer. His breakthrough here is arguably as much the medical diet as a way to pull for-profit Big Pharma interest and funding into this field as the actual science.

Still, intermittent fasting is still far behind straight calorie restriction in terms of data and level of conviction that the output has a certain set of effects under a given set of circumstances. The interesting thing to my eyes is that the gene expression studies show that fasting and calorie restriction at similar overall intake of calories produce overlapping but in some ways quite different gene expression changes. Short-lived species have a much larger response in terms of health and longevity to all these things in comparison to long-lived species such as ourselves, however.

All in all it's quite the interesting area of research, especially now that the scientific community is making significant progress towards biomarkers of biological aging (such as DNA methylation pattern).

Here's a good introductory paper or two for human CR:

Will calorie restriction work in humans? - [http://impactaging.com/papers/v5/n7/full/100581.html](http://impactaging.com/papers/v5/n7/full/100581.html)

NIH study finds calorie restriction lowers some risk factors for age-related diseases - [http://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study- finds...](http://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-finds- calorie-restriction-lowers-some-risk-factors-age-related-diseases)

And an interview with Longo on the thrust of his work on intermittent fasting and CR:

[http://michelsonmedical.org/2014/12/26/igf-1-fasting- discuss...](http://michelsonmedical.org/2014/12/26/igf-1-fasting-discussion- valter-longo/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been practicing intermittent fasting for almost a year now. It works fine for me. I generally eat no breakfast or lunch. I drink only water throughout the day. I run a 5k every morning on an empty stomach with no ill effects. It really helps keep my body fat low and makes me conscious and deliberate about what I eat.

The only exceptions are meals I eat for social reasons (e.g., work lunch meetings) and mornings on which I run a road race and want to ensure I'm at peak performance. I find that when I do break the fast, I'm more hungry sooner.

<comment><USER24> Does your concentration suffer throughout the day due to low blood sugar? Did it at first?

<comment><USER25> Anecdotally, low blood sugar only seems to bother me when I am not physically fit. Similarly, I only get hunger pangs when I've eaten too much and haven't exercised. After a few weeks of steady endurance training both of these things went away. If I am really hungry, it presents less as pain or weakness than a very empty stomach. If I'm not training regularly, my stomach is rarely ever that empty. I'm always hungry, which leads to constant snacking and eating big meals. Exercising even lightly on a regular basis, there's a much stronger feedback loop where your body has an opportunity to let you know you've over eaten or eaten a poor mix of nutrients.

All of this is probably limited to light resistance/endurance training. This sort of goes out the window while lifting weights, at least for me. Then its very hard for me not to eat a ton. I think the fascination with protein is totally misguided though. Some people think they need 200g/day when probably 30g is sufficient.

One thing I really embraced in college was ketosis. I hardly ate, aside from a few well earned feasts. But its extremely hard to maintain if you don't have the freedom to work out multiple times a day and carbs are a convenient and cheap source of calories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I strongly doubt we are evolutionarily adapted to a steady regimen of 3 meals a day every day. I think it's virtually certain that our biochemical engine is optimized for something a lot closer to "intermittent fasting".

<comment><USER27> That's pseudoscience. Irregular eating is normal for hunter/gatherer societies, and most animals like our ancestors that sit in a scavenger niche. We know (or have good evidence that; I followed a link once and am too lazy to look up the research) our gut has adapted just in the 10k year period after the advent of agriculture. Agrarian societies are built around grain storage and rationing. They absolutely have regular access to calories.

That doesn't prove anything, of course. But it does argue that you should be careful with that kind of "it's the way our bodies are intended to work" logic. To a large extent, we're already adapted to "modern" eating styles.

<comment><USER26> I'm getting a bit tired of seeing the "pseudoscience" label slapped on an argument every single time evolutionary biology is mentioned. I understand why one might want to do this occasionally, but I feel the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, and now the label is being abused.

This is basically the new "correlation is not causation" meme equivalent. Yes, correlation indeed does not equate causation in a strict sense. But given a large enough number of samples, it becomes the domain of statistical analysis, and then causation can be solidly inferred with a well determined degree of confidence.

So be careful when repeating trendy memes. Trendy does not equate truthful.

Anyway, to provide some kind of answer: Seeing how studies keep coming in, showing that I.F. is beneficial in a number of different ways, seems to suggest that this regimen is, indeed, better overall for your health than 3 meals a day every day. The jury is probably still out, but perhaps getting close to returning for a decision now.

Also, the 10k year "adaptation" is a weak argument. We've adapted in some ways, yes - lactose tolerance, etc. In other ways the intracellular biochemistry has not changed. 10k years is a short time after all; it allows some adaptations but it's too quick for big changes. Our distant ancestors very likely did not live on a steady caloric input, and the time is too short for us to have adapted completely to a different feeding pattern.

Yes, I agree it's hard to know for sure, that's why I used expressions such as "virtually certain" and "strongly doubt". Both suggest a degree of uncertainty. I was not making it into a science, by any means.

TLDR: Nuance, instead of binary logic.

<comment><USER28> Hmm, I'm tempted to think this is an analogue of Muphry's law, where someone correcting someone's grammar is likely to make grammar mistakes himself. (Or, at least, that we are much more likely to notice if he has.)

Getting a large enough number of samples is not enough to show that a correlation implies a causation. It merely demonstrates that a perceived correlation is real and is not the result of random sampling error. Take a few samples, and you'll see a strong correlation between wearing a cast and having broken bones; take an enormous number of samples, and you'll prove the correlation is real, and you'll show the precise magnitude of the correlation with small error bars; but you'll never prove that wearing a cast causes broken bones. To prove causation, you need a causative theory, and evidence that distinguishes it from competing causative theories.

Though perhaps you are thinking of situations where the only plausible causative theories are "A and B are unrelated" and "A causes B".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My personal anecdote is a bit different. I don't have a breakfast on a daily bases since I can remember, for the simple reason that I wake up a little bit nauseous every day, and it takes me a couple hours to actually feel like eating anything, so I just go on and wait for lunchtime.

It's never helped me lose weight, and I can't really correlate to any improvements in my everyday life. It got me on a daily Pantoprazole regime though, since the long periods without food have skyrocketed my gastritis.

So, as most of the stuff out on the Internet, don't go doing it just because everybody else is. Try it, and see if it fits you. Don't overdo it and you should be fine.

<comment><USER30> _It got me on a daily Pantoprazole regime though, since the long periods without food have skyrocketed my gastritis._

I highly recommend you look into Pepcid Complete. I took Prilosec for years and it has some interesting side effects that even the experts don't know what they mean: it turns the lining of your stomach from smooth to all bumpy. I know I'm describing it badly, but when I had an endoscopy before and after being on Prilosec I noticed it in the pictures my Dr. showed me. When I asked him he said "no one knows what effect those will have on you long term." And this was from the premier Gastroenterologist in my area.

I immediately looked for an alternative.

The thing about Pepsid Complete (available at Costco for ~$20 for 100) is it has a weaker proton pump inhibitor and an antacid. I only take them when I need them and I take them far less than I did Prilosec.

Drug side effects are the dirty secret of the pharma industry. The FDA is just too weak to demand better and longer term studies on drugs.

Very related:

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/10/25/high- prices](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/10/25/high-prices)

<comment><USER31> Or just take a Calcium/Magnesium 2:1 (try 500/250mg daily) supplement with vitamin D. Better ratio, no anti-histamin. Vitamin D helps the body utilize the minerals.

My better half had serious acid reflux, but no longer use prescription meds since taking these daily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've done intermittent fasting (specifically, the 'Leangains' protocol) for 6 years now, and it's treated me very well. The biggest benefit to me is that it makes diet adherence much easier, and keeps my macronutrient intake top-of- mind, which has a sort of trickle-down effect in my overall health.

Coupled with intense fasted weight lifting or sport activity, I feel great whether I am cutting or bulking. I can play 90 minutes of soccer while fasted and feel more energetic than anyone else on the field.

For anyone interested in starting: ease into it, track your calories and protein/fats/carbs to get a sense of what ratios make you feel better / lose bodyfat more effectively, and keep in mind caffeine and alcohol will feel more potent. Some people find the first few days uncomfortable, but wait for the one week mark before making any judgments (or 1-month if you're comfortable gathering more data).

<comment><USER33> I have always preferred avoiding digestion when physical exertion is imminent. The harder I work, the less hungry I become.

People have mentioned to me that I may have a food allergy, or some other type of disorder that makes digestion a problem. Have you considered this?

<comment><USER32> It's not so much that I feel better exercising while fasted; it's that I don't feel inhibited exercising while fasted. However, the hunger-dampening effect of working out is common[0]:

> "There are two important hormones involved in provoking appetite: ghrelin > and peptide YY. Ghrelin is a hormone that stimulates hunger while peptide YY > suppresses it. Aerobic and anaerobic exercise, such as weight training, both > stimulate an increase in the peptide YY hormone. This is the primary reason > healthy people have a feeling of fullness post-workout."

After reflecting for a moment, I realize I experienced that sensation more often before I started intermittently fasting.

[0] [http://www.livestrong.com/article/405012-exercise-loss-of- ap...](http://www.livestrong.com/article/405012-exercise-loss-of-appetite/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have being doing IF now for a 4 months and out of all the various dieting methods I have tried over the years I'm very impressed so far.

I only do one meal a day (big lunch around 2pm) and then a protein shake and maybe a beer at 8ish. I like that I can have a beer every day.

I have noticed a couple of things with diet:

* shockingly you can still workout hard while starving.

* it seems to help regulate and improve bowel movements (TMI but if I eat healthy and frequently I kill several trees w/ toilet paper consumption).

* it doesn't seem to work as well if you been skipping breakfast your whole life.

* it doesn't seem to work on females.

Of course these are limited observations.

<comment><USER35> And you do this every day? Not what I picture when I hear "intermittent" \- the article mentions the 5:2 plan, but I'm curious what other schedules are common. I've always skipped 2 meals monthly as religious observance, but I'm seriously considering 5:2 to try out health benefits.

<comment><USER34> No on the weekends I sort of do a refeed to regain leptin and what not so I eat 2 calorie dense meals and follow the 8 hour regimen.

During the week I just find I need to start shutting it down earlier or tapering down.. or else. So I do a casein protein shake (just casein) and a beer (usually the beer is prior) as my second meal.

I don't think there is any magic except that I'm doing something that I can maintain (the beer being my treat to help maintain follow through).

Oh I forgot. Sometimes on Friday I will wait till 8:00pm to eat (24 hour fast). A guy on reddit does this and he/she calls it "Fast Fridays". The idea being Fridays and the weekends are usually a calorie fest. I like it for it practicality and for the catchy name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > The scientific community remains divided about the value of intermittent > fasting. Critics say that the science is not yet strong enough to justify > widespread recommendations for fasting as a way to lose weight or boost > health...

Its always strange when ancient practices like fasting are so poorly understood.

<comment><USER37> That's because they were not done for any good reason. By this I mean some person with mental problems started a cult told everyone to start fasting for "religious" reasons and people followed. Obviously we don't pay much attention to that these days. Just like we don't investigate the scientific benefits of sanctified food.

<comment><USER38> Barely worth responding to, but many of dietary restrictions imposed by early religions had very real benefits, such as Hebrews with pork (Trichinella).

It's beyond foolish to flippantly dismiss knowledge offhand because you dislike or are prejudiced against the source.

<comment><USER14> They may have had real benefits, but not scientifically understood benefits, and by now they are followed for religious tradition rather than because research has been done showing that it's a good idea. Pork is a good example, as far as I'm aware there aren't people recommending avoiding pork (while still eating other meats) for health reasons, just for religious reasons.

The person you replied to worded it rudely about religions, but I agree with his overally point in that I want to hear from scientists not religious leaders when it comes to health advice, regardless of how sensible the religious advice was when it first came into existence.

<comment><USER37> Considering all the other problems that have been caused by religion, I think being a bit critical of it is more than justified. I am not going around oppressing millions if not billions of people with bad ideas that are quite literally based in mental problems.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJM5mipwebw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJM5mipwebw)

<comment><USER14> I'm an atheist, and I have many criticisms of many religions, but imposing dietry restrictions on those who wish to follow them isn't one of them. I'd also suggest that being constructively critical in a debate is fine, posting comments like yours that I refered to is only going to make religious people dislike you and won't change a single opinion, other than making you and other people who already agree with you feel smug.

(For the record, while I wouldn't necessarily agree with a statement of "religions have done more good than harm", I do think they can and have done good in some areas. A religion that promotes good morals and tolerance, without preaching the negatives that you and I dislike, is fine with me, even if I don't personally believe in everything they believe in. And on a personal note, I'm thankful for some of the wonderful music and other art that religion has inspired and/or funded over the years.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've been eating mostly in the 5pm-10pm window for the last 6 months after watching a few TED talks and related videos. Adjustment took about a week or two. I don't feel hunger during the day but when u get home I eat all I want. Lost 10 kilos and am feeling great. Every other morning I go for a 4K run and every day I go for a swim in the ocean. Don't feel any hunger after the run or swim.

I cook breakfast for my family a few times a week and have no cravings while smelling or handling food.

The good things about IF are

\- more free time - breakfast and lunch can be spent having fun

\- no 3.30itis after lunch - productive all day long

\- less money spent

The bad:

\- socially awkward. Most social gatherings involve eating. All celebrations are eat-feasts.

All in all it's a positive experience and feels more natural.

I've been thinking "eat less, exercise more" for a while. But only when I started doing IF I really understood what it means: 80% eat less, 20% exercise more. And exercise must come before food - having a big meal, then going for a walk is not as good for you as doing it the other way around. Run first, eat second - like the lions do it.

You have to eat way less and exercise just a little more and your body will adjust. IF is much easier than going for controlled portions. Because "limbic hunger" (look it up).

<comment><USER40> > The bad: socially awkward. Most social gatherings involve eating. All > celebrations are eat-feasts.

I found the opposite: since I can skip breakfast and lunch, going out at night and having beers and snacks without reaching my daily limits is possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I had just been reading _Antifragile_ by Nassim Taleb and he theorizes that fasting works by exploiting your body's "anti-fragility" and need for stressors by periodically starving it of some resource, which forces it to adapt in a way that improves the overall system (eg by economizing). For similar reasons, he recommends a diet of "different nutrients at different meals" rather than making each meal balanced in itself: you rotate what your body has to economize on.

Not saying he necessarily has a justifiable basis for believing this: in a lot of the book, he really comes off as a know-it-all everyone-else-is-stupid crank :-/

<comment><USER42> That's a generalization but there are a few concepts that fit.

1) autophagy causes the body to consume cancerous and senescent damaged cells

2) by lowering metabolism free radical production is decreased

3) inflammatory effects from insulin don't happen if insulin is not being released into the blood stream

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I've been eating LCHF for almost 4 years now, I started doing it to lose weight, but I feel so much better when on diet that is hard to stop. When I'm firm on the diet, I can easily go a full day without any food, and not feel any hunger or mood swings. It's great.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've known (and have been following a form of fasting diet) about this since I watched this documentary: Eat, Fast and Live Longer (BBC Horizon, 2012-2013)[1]

> Michael Mosley has set himself a truly ambitious goal: he wants to live > longer, stay younger and lose weight in the bargain. And he wants to make as > few changes to his life as possible along the way. He discovers the powerful > new science behind the ancient idea of fasting, and he thinks he's found a > way of doing it that still allows him to enjoy his food. Michael tests out > the science of fasting on himself - with life-changing results.

You can watch it here: [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvdbtt_eat-fast-live- longer...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvdbtt_eat-fast-live-longer- hd_shortfilms)

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01lxyzc](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01lxyzc)

</comment><comment><USER4> > Critics say that the science is not yet strong enough to justify widespread > recommendations for fasting as a way to lose weight or boost health, and > that most of the evidence supporting it comes from animal research.

Should that not be the other way around, that more research is needed before recommending you eat three large meals a day plus snacks?

</comment><comment><USER45> Amazing to see IF & Ketogenic entering the mainstream.

I was on the verge of metabolic syndrome, with a 38 inch waist, high triglycerides and high cholesterol. [http://go.DanielOdio.com/health](http://go.DanielOdio.com/health) In 10 months of IF I've lost 60 pounds. [http://go.DanielOdio.com/fasting](http://go.DanielOdio.com/fasting)

I've also experimented with Ketosis for four months [http://go.DanielOdio.com/ketosis](http://go.DanielOdio.com/ketosis) and now with "Blue Zones" [http://go.DanielOdio.com/guide](http://go.DanielOdio.com/guide)

Love seeing so much of this gaining a broader audience.

</comment><comment><USER46> These are dangerous as they naturally lead to a fast/binge type eating pattern . if you're not careful you'll Indoctrinate yourself into a new hell.

I've been lifting and experimenting with my nutrition for over a decade. Just be careful, it goes from regime to disorder quick.

<comment><USER47> I did the "no breakfast/no dinner/reasonable lunch" thing for about 6 months - I'd also flag you have to be ultra careful when trying to "normalise" your eating habits too.

I intended to lose about 2 1/2 stone, but ended up losing 3 because I was fighting my body's urge to EAT ALL THE THINGS and slowly bring intake back up when going back to three meals a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I got really into IF about 6 years ago. It was a pretty good way to drop about 30 pounds of fat.

That said - at least for me - I'm not sure it helped my eating patterns in general.

For some background, I got up to about 305 lbs when I was ~19 (about 9 years ago), then lost a bunch of weight over a year and a half or so. Got down to about 180 (way too skinny). I really like food. I eat way too fast, and I eat way too much, and I love eating junk food.

So, for me, IF was kind of a way to compartmentalize what was essentially binge eating. I'd push my fasting periods further and further into the evenings, sometimes going til 4-7 PM, then having an absolute blowout meal.

Eventually I stopped doing IF. Well, kind of. I still don't eat breakfast. I got less extreme with it.

</comment><comment><USER49> People have been advocating, skipping breakfast since long, like more than a century.

There is this book, published in 1900 by a doctor named, Mr.Edward Dewey, the title of which is - The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure.

I have read this book, and it amazes me how logical, everything that doctor has explained.

I don't have breakfast.

Here is the link to the book on Gutenberg - [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27128](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27128)

</comment><comment><USER50> I would be interested to see the body of research on the effects of Ramadan (1 month of fasting, both food and liquid until sunset) on the health of those who fast.

The effects on the economy were clear from what I observed in Afghanistan - <USER2> least 5% potential GDP loss due to reduced working hours, shutdown of public services, overall latency of business transactions during this time. An actual study across different observing countries would be intriguing.

</comment><comment><USER42> I really wish there was more scientific research around extended fasting. There's so little research and much of it doesn't wait long enough for ketoadaptation.

I've done extended water fasts as well. 18 days of just water is the longest I've done and I felt like I could have gone longer.

<comment><USER20> The longest I have fastest for was 48 hours. It was wonderful. Those first few bites of food were heavenly.

I'm probably gonna try doing that today

<comment><USER14> Did a 48 (actually a few hours more I guess) water fast ending yesterday and haven't had carbs since, am quite low on calories yesterday/today and still feeling absolutely fine and not hungry. Definitely will repeat again in the future (and staying off carbs for at least a few weeks, hopefully).

<comment><USER9> Did a 48. I got a runner's high by the end of it, and lost some stubborn belly fat. Important to stay well-hydrated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Nearly every health-related article that makes it to the top of Hacker News these days is stuff that was discussed in the Paleo community 5+ years ago. Earlier today was the benefits of a high fat ketogenic diet in regards to cancer, and now IF. Good to see you guys catching up!

<comment><USER52> Confirmation bias is real :)

An experiment: list every topic/theory discussed by paleo enthusiasts. How many are currently supported by evidence? How many have been soundly refuted? How frequently does the evidence shift in either case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I've been using the time restricted Intermittent Fasting for the last month or two. I drink coffee in the morning with some creamer but other than that I don't eat until 12:30 (Lunch) and eat again around 7:00PM or 8:00PM at night.

Honestly, Its not all that different than my old eating habits except now I've cut out breakfast (which I only really ate because it is, "the most important meal of the day")

I use to wrestle in college and maintain my weight via exercise but now I work in an office and this is the only diet I've been able to find that allows me to workout a normal amount and maintain a decent weight.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've tried IF on-and-since since 2010. While I found it pretty useful for weight loss, I constantly felt foggy and dased mentally, even after months of going at it.

My body(or brain, I guess) works better when I eat small amounts of protein every four hours or so.

</comment><comment><USER55> > _Mark Mattson, a neuroscientist at the National Institute on Aging in > Maryland, has not had breakfast in 35 years._

But... but.. breakfast is the best part of my day :( Thanks for ruining it, pseudoscientific celebrity fad of the moment!

<comment><USER9> I love breakfast too... I just eat it for dinner :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a nice resource that explains 16/8 IF pretty good : [http://antranik.org/intermittent-fasting/](http://antranik.org/intermittent- fasting/)

</comment><comment><USER56> Im been doing this but skipping dinner instead of breakfast. I don't eat anything after 14 p.m until next morning around 6 a.m.

Few first days was hard, lots of cravings, but after a week/week and a half I get used to it.

I feel more healthy (yeah, I know, I know...) than ever. And I'm losing weight at a steady pace (without the usual hights/lows, etc.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've been doing this for years, not because I want to, but because I'm too poor not to.

</comment><comment><USER58> Seemingly everyone is talking about this in the context of 'gains' as part of a high-exercise lifestyle. What about the rest of us on the bare minimum of exercise? Is it possible that simply skipping breakfast has all these health benefits?

<comment><USER10> Well eat if you're hungry and don't if you aren't. Just don't eat because "it's time", "it's socially accepted" or any of this shit. Also hungry doesn't mean "I haven't had food in my mouth in less then 3 hours".

That's the gist of it, but we humans have to complicate it, because "complicated" is supposedly more scientific then "simple".

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> been doing it for a few months now. it's pretty interesting that the first week i get hungry the whole day from not eating breakfast, but now I go on with the day without breakfast or lunch, and only drink water through the day and I don't get hungry or cravings.

Also none of that afternoon food coma from lunch!

Still not sure if IF just makes it easier to eat less or there's really something behind it(enough evidence from both sides, like how good/bad egg is for you) but it's worked for me so far

</comment><comment><USER60> I've been doing 16/8 IF for most of my life and didn't realize it had a name or was something that people talked about...

</comment><comment><USER61> As a Bahai that is currently fasting, it's nice to see science and religion agree!

</comment><comment><USER62> Enjoy your cold hands, socially awkward encounters and binge eating sessions.

</comment><comment><USER63> "Mark Mattson, a neuroscientist at the National Institute on Aging in Maryland, has not had breakfast in 35 years. "

and his squat+dl+bench total is?

<comment><USER64> Who cares? The /r/fitness inspired idea that strength training is the end-all- be-all for health and fitness needs has really gotten out of control.

<comment><USER63> It's not the "be all end all" deal, but an objective measurement of progress (or lack thereof) nonetheless. The question might be "what's his 100m dash time" or anything else really.

Nothing in that article indicates any positive improvement as a result of this self-imposed IF for no apparent reason :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> saiko-chriskun everybody here is crazy

</comment><comment><USER65> tag: things_that_will_have_no_effect_on_your_life_but_you_think_might

(edit: I eat two meals a day, except sometimes I'm hungry in the morning and then I _do_ often get hungry again soon afterward too and end up eating 4-5 meals that day, but I think everyone's metabolism is different, and moreover different at different times, and feel more harm than good can often come out of these studies, especially when presented to data-centric people like HN readers). (Not to mention, I think a lot of it doesn't matter _at all_ (searching for "Douglas Adams Nutrition" diatribe but not finding it).

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't think it's possible for the average person to fast in any of the ways suggested here. I think the best thing to do is have a light dinner without carbs and a healthy breakfast. If you do this daily it will be like a daily intermittent fast as you can have a large lunch to indulge yourself. This way you can actually stick to it. I have been doing this for years and am very fit. I made a video showing what I ate for lunch each day while losing weight to prove it works [https://youtu.be/v0hYofwTIiw](https://youtu.be/v0hYofwTIiw)

<comment><USER67> > I don't think it's possible for the average person to fast in any of the > ways suggested here.

I'm quite an average person (or at least I'd like to think so) but for many years I did what that first guy from the article did, i.e. not having breakfast nor lunch, I was eating most of the calories for the day during dinner. Not sure how that has affected my health, at least now I'm back at having breakfast again, but the culture of "three big meals a day" is certainly not the be-all and end-all of nutrition.

I also cannot eat meat before 4 or 5 PM, I can't understand how people can have things like English breakfast so early in the morning. I also love fruits, if it were to me I'd eat fruits all day, every day.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I am building Reesd, a redundant storage service - <AUTHOR> http://hypered.io/blog/2014-02-17-building-reesd/

<comment><USER2> To use scp instead of a custom protocol (or even HTTP) is the neat thing here. The possibilities are infinite.

Also, this makes me think about what today's services that run on HTTP could run on top of basic Unix tools (like scp) instead of building their own infrastructure on top of HTTP or something else (I couldn't think of any, though, so I'm probably wrong in thinking this).

<comment><USER3> I really wish that more services that dealt with documents just exported either a synthetic WebDAV or SSH server.

Mounting either of those server-types as a directory is simple and straightforward on Windows, OSX, _or_ Linux, which is something that can't be said for pretty much anything else.

I really wonder why S3 isn't (mainly) a WebDAV service, for that matter...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here. I know that some scp flags are not handled correctly or that I don't provide a nice story to list and delete files, but I wanted to explain what I was doing early. I plan to write a bit more, e.g. about how I use Docker but I needed some kind of introduction first.

</comment><comment><USER4> How would this be different than using Amazon S3 with s3cmd ([https://github.com/s3tools/s3cmd](https://github.com/s3tools/s3cmd))? I understand scp is stock in all Linux distros, but Amazon S3 is extremely cost competitive, allows archival to Glacier, and allows for immediate verification of data integrity. It only takes moments to install s3cmd from the command line.

Please don't think I'm being a debbie downer. I could be wrong.

TL;DR Why is this better than S3?

<comment><AUTHOR> The bare idea is very much similar to S3, i.e. a file store. I hope to bring a different value with things like webhooks, Docker images rebuilt automatically as files are uploaded (e.g. for reconfiguration prior to deployment on a cluster of machines), ... agreed these additional features are vaporware but I get started :)

Now, I really think that re-using scp is neat. For instance if you have tools to manage a cluster of machines, it is entirely possible you are already using SSH deploy keys (i.e. you have tools to manage SSH-based credentials). But sure you are probably also using other services that requires API keys.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the response! I look forward to trying your service!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Did I understand your purpose wrong, or can the same thing be achieved by running sshd on a (cluster of) machine(s) that mount a GlusterFS/Ceph/OtherDistributedRedundantFS volume?

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be similar. Indeed the redundant backend can be implemented in various ways. Now I would really like to experiment with Bup to provide historization in addition to deduplication (again this could be implemented with some underlying file systems, but I really like Git/Bup).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> like tarsnap ([https://www.tarsnap.com/](https://www.tarsnap.com/))?

<comment><AUTHOR> The beauty of Tarsnap is to provide a tar-like command-line tool. Here, while the later goal is to provide storage in a more generally accessible way, the beauty is to use scp as-is, which you already have (if you're a developer).

A client-side encryption tool could be implemented and use any scp accessible hosts, but that would not be really a Tarsnap equivalent: there is still the problem of avoiding redundant storage and traffic. Bup could be a solution here.</comment></comment>


Making sure software stays insecure [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cr.yp.to/talks/2014.07.10/slides-djb-20140710-a4.pdf <comment><USER3> FYI, for Internet-sourced files, both Windows and Mac (though I've only firsthand knowledge of Mac via mdfind/spotlight) actually do keep track of the source of files. Hence the extra message you get of: you downloaded this program from X on Date; are you sure you want to run it?

Of course, like antivirus, this is only as useful as the security-mindedness of your users. The most secure approaches that I'm aware of involve both locking down the systems to prevent unauthorized OS modifications (e.g. Chromebook, iOS, etc.), combined with a whitelisting of all applications or activities allowed on the system, and tracking of extensive audit logs on Windows to a remote server such that abnormal behavior can be detected quickly. Automatic updates are a must, though I'd rather certificate pinning were used given governments level exploits of Microsoft's certificate (since revoked) to install spyware via Windows Update. Ultimately... How can you be so right to say 2014.07 is still insecure but then not acknowledge that security is system-specific? My definition of insecure activity may differ on a case by case basis, because security, ultimately, is made up of tradeoffs, restrictions and oversight. And it's not just software, as humans indeed can be the weak link, but ideally most secure systems create environments to prevent or monitor this.

</comment><comment><USER4> His ideas about subverting the security community are interesting.

But I think his emphasis on knowing the source of everything is weird. In my opinion the main security responsibility of the kernel is to not let users escalate, preventing users from writing and modifying where they shouldn't, and reading what they shouldn't. Followed by preventing denial of service by enforcing quotas.

His idea about tagging source for processes based on what files they read, and then tagging written files with those sources sounds like a bad one. I think many processes would read files from a lot of unrelated users, which would lead to noise. Tags seem to pile up, as there is no principle for how to remove tags. Tags are contagious, for when a commonly opened file (say a conf file) is written by an editor, it acquires tags of all files opened by the editor. When the editor creates an output file, all the conf-file tags are transferred over.

When everything has source *, people would just stop caring.

<comment><USER5> He probably assumes that processes are usually short-lived or limited in their scope (that's the design principles he used in his software, anyway). That way "source creep" doesn't happen so quickly.

It reminds me of the taint principle (-T) as provided by Perl 5. The differences are that there the set of sources consists just of "secure" and "insecure", and processes themselves are not tainted. In a world of C programs, tainting processes themselves (as they become in contact with a potential "contagion") may actually make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of a similar talk Poul-Henning Kamp gave where he presents a thought experiment on how it would be possible to subvert open source projects to ensure the priority is insecurity [http://youtu.be/fwcl17Q0bpk](http://youtu.be/fwcl17Q0bpk)

</comment><comment><USER7> The ideas presented here are somewhat similar to IX[1], a security-oriented operating system implemented by Doug McIlroy (inventor of Unix pipes) starting from Tenth Edition Research Unix.

[1] [http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/IX/](http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/IX/)

</comment><comment><USER4> The slides repeat themselves, and have a line length of ~5 words, so I made a reformated version

[http://pastebin.com/UW2hc2vZ](http://pastebin.com/UW2hc2vZ)

<comment><USER5> I didn't find this very readable, so I've added formatting.

[https://github.com/pflanze/slides- djb-20140710/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/pflanze/slides- djb-20140710/blob/master/slides.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like how this thought experiment leads to questioning the current security orthodoxy. The "security community" is made to serve at least two masters: If security works, forensics can't work. If forensics works well enough to have standard tools, that implies longstanding unresolved security problems. Yet many security consultants work both sides of the fence.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't really understand what's the point of tracking the sources when copying files? A security policy which restricts my actions over an object I had copied (with permissions to do so) seems a bit strange to me. But the slides don't really explain why this is wrong?

<comment><USER10> I'm frankly puzzled by this as well.

1\. Why is it a mandatory requirement?

2\. How can it possibly be uniformly implemented.

E.g.: curl <some source> | perl -e <some filter> > file

How the hell is _any_ OS going to track origin of 'file'?

What _is_ origin of 'file'?

Add an arbitrary number of netcat-over-UDP transfers between start and end of process.

Ownership/origin metadata is impossible to track unless it's overlayed on every single bit of of information transiting every process and every network node.

djb simply does a massive hand-wave over this, as far as I can tell. I respect the man a lot, but this totally loses me.

<comment><USER11> How is this different than the concept of 'taint' in Perl? Or setting meta data on a file object?

        mdls -name kMDItemWhereFroms slides-djb-20140710-a4.pdf
        kMDItemWhereFroms = (
            "http://cr.yp.to/talks/2014.07.10/slides-djb-20140710-a4.pdf",
            ""
        )

Set some metadata on process streams. One could write a kernel module to track this flow.

I'd love to set filters on file actions like, "after an image/pdf/etc has been downloaded prevent any program from loading it until it has been scrubbed through a whitelisting format normalizer running in a VM" if problems are found, alert and blacklist source.

Free technical PDFs make a great vehicle into a research org.

<comment><USER10> Taint isn't telling you _who_ data came from. Only that it was _external_ to the program. That's a much simpler challenge, particularly as it takes place within a single process's context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> it stops at sharing. what he describes works OK on the OS. In fact, mobile OSes start enforcing similar stuff.

RSBAC, SELinux, what not, did this for years. NSA you say? SELinux codebase is ridiculously small. It's the concepts that matter, and you know what? These tools are just patchwork for the current OSes, knowingly so. They're far from the silver bullet.

When you add the web its harder. What if Frank's computer is offline? What if its slow as hell?

=> you get these files from google which you do not known, is an abstract entity, yet you trust.

What if you want to modify the file? => Now you own it. Including the potentially bad parts.

Now, there are quite a few attempts at writing secure software with a much more complete concept, much closer to the silver bullet.

There is NO financial interest in it. No financial interest means we'll get there very slowly. Plan9 died. singularity died.

What's left? Living with a larger risk is whats left. That's why risk analysis is used for security (just as its used elsewhere). NIST's framework isnt actually dumb. Sure, dollars should probably go into secure software - <USER2> that doesn't mean that today sysadmins will make stuff more secure by "not watching logs or updating to 2014.07 when 2014.06 has a remote exploit".

All that to say the PDF is interesting due to whom has been writing it but it's confused and he hasn't found the direction he's looking for yet.

</comment><comment><USER13> For as long as we keep re-inventing the wheel, there will be holes in the spokes. For every company that reinvents a daemon process, there's another set of security holes to be exploited. Its human nature to continually alter working/running systems, throw away code, etc. These are cultural/ethical issues which the security spooks know they can continually exploit, and have done so for centuries.

The problem with security is entirely an ethical one, and not at all technological. No amount of technology can make up for an ethical dilemna. What we have with the NSA/GCHQ/five-eyes is entirely a cultural artifact perpetuated upon us all by those who stand to profit - greatly - from hatred, distrust, enmity among people. The fact is, as long as we continue to support the machinations of the military-industrial complex, and its endless streams of justifications for why it is we need to 'hate those people', we will be subject to their rule.

Shut down the warrior class, and we have a better chance at a secure future.

<comment><USER14> There are times when the wheel at hand is an ill fit or perhaps there genuinely is a better way to do things Ex: Libressl. And so the wheel needs reinvention.

Reinvention of the wheel, reimplementation of a paradigm or some other repetition in a slightly different or totally different way isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as the underlying concepts are well understood and it is executed with competence. I still believe malicious tampering is unnecessary when carelessness - or tiredness - on the part of the developer will do just as well.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure that you can use LibreSSL as an example of something that is a "genuinely better way to do things", given that it's an essentially brand new project. There are reasons to believe it's a better way to do things, but we won't know how well it performs until there's time for people to start trying to exploit it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a video of this talk? It's kind of annoying to read the same thing over and over again because the slides repeat themselves.

<comment><USER17> Use the presentation mode of a proper PDF reader to go through the slides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So an OS kernel constitutes a reasonably sized TCB, but a browser is "massive" and "very expensive" to check? Should I look for that on #StuffHNSays, or is there one just for DJB?

<comment><USER19> Comparatively speaking, the functions of an OS kernel are fairly small and contained. Sure, you can find bloated kernels out there and small secure browsers, but I can read the kernel portion of the POSIX specs without crying. I can't say the same for all the browser specifications out there.

<comment><USER18> > I can read the kernel portion of the POSIX specs without crying.

POSIX is an incredibly poor guide to what a modern OS does. Even in the parts related to storage, they're hopelessly outdated - either forcing onerous compatibility with systems that haven't been sold in twenty years, or completely failing to address issues that have gained in importance over that same time. The network parts are even worse. There isn't even a POSIX spec for virtualization, and internal issues such as NUMA or PCI/USB enumeration were never under their purview to begin with.

If the requirements for a modern kernel were specified to the same degree as those for a modern browser, they'd be much _longer_. Note that external protocols and formats are not part of the browser's own specification unless you apply the same rule for external protocols and formats used by the kernel - pulling in a ton of stuff from IETF, PCI SIG, IBTA, SATA-IO, ANSI T10, etc. It's only fair, but again you'd end up with something far longer than the browser equivalent.

The responsibilities of an OS kernel are far deeper and broader than almost anyone out in browser-land thinks. I'm quite sure that works the other way too. Just because it's harder to see detail from further away doesn't mean it's not there.</comment></comment></comment>


Darkness - <AUTHOR> http://stories.wegnerdesign.com/darkness/ <comment><USER2> Very nice. Run a spellchecker though, the number of mistakes really broke up the immersion, which is otherwise nicely done:

r/dieing/dying

r/exaustion/exhaustion

r/meaningfull/meaningful

r/fleating/fleeting

r/James'/James (multiple places)

(Couldn't find how to contact author...)

<comment><USER3> Hey davedx - I never ran spell check, because the piece wasn't really finished. Someone chanced upon it and shared it before I was even done with the design.

I've got a couple things that need my attention right now, but I'll put in those spell checks ASAP. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Fixed - thanks Davedx!

[https://github.com/josephwegner/stories.wegnerdesign.com/com...](https://github.com/josephwegner/stories.wegnerdesign.com/commit/ff38431c576b23124f790e4f394309a663382096)

<comment><USER2> No problem! Yeah, it sometimes happens that people stumble across things that aren't finished and post them up here. I think it's a pretty nice signal you're doing something interesting though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's broken on Android Chrome ( [http://imgur.com/l0m9z15](http://imgur.com/l0m9z15)).

</comment><comment><USER5> I would've read the entire article if it weren't for the gimmicky bullshit of the background changing colors for no god damn reason. What, is this 1996? Are there <blink> tags further down in the page? Save that shit for your wanna-be- geocities site.

</comment><comment><USER6> reminds me of one of my favorite poems

[http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/philip- larkin/aubade/](http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/philip-larkin/aubade/)

</comment><comment> tech-no-logical nice effect, but suffers from 'medium disease'. font size is 'unreadably' big, I find it very difficult to read such texts on my normal 1920x1200 24" monitor.

<comment><USER7> Medium gets font sizes right. It's one of the few sites that do.

<comment> tech-no-logical seriously, why ? are our eyes getting worse ? have centuries of publishers gotten it wrong all this time, and should everything have been 'large print' edition from the start ?

I'm 40+ and I should probably wear glasses for reading, but I really don't 'get' the big font hype.

<comment><USER7> I don't know about you, but I don't read a screen nearly as closely to my face as I read a book. If, for example, you normally read a screen at ~2x magazine distance, it stands to reason that screen type should be around ~2x bigger than magazine type, no?

The best article I've seen on the subject is this one:

[http://ia.net/blog/100e2r/](http://ia.net/blog/100e2r/)

And maybe follow-up with this one:

[http://ia.net/blog/responsive-typography-the- basics](http://ia.net/blog/responsive-typography-the-basics)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks everyone for the comments! I didn't intend for this to get shared yet, because it was a work in progress - apparently Hacker News thought differently. I appreciate all the compliments and feedback!

<comment><USER8> Based on the url, I thought it was about design, then decided it wasn't, and now realize that it also was :)

Very good, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool implementation. Really going to be cool seeing what people experiment with when eye-tracking starts gaining traction.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really love the initial scroll! How the page just says darkness and then that becomes the header

<comment><USER11> The effect doesn't work nearly as we'll on an iPad (where I read it) because the onscroll only fires after the momentum stops when the user's finger lifts from the device. So at the beginning the text was scrolling under the "darkness" header floating in the middle of the screen. It also made the text color and background transitions a bit jarring too.

<comment><USER12> Virtually all scroll effects don't work well on iOS devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I enjoyed reading the text but I enjoyed the design even more

</comment><comment><USER14> Amazing design!

</comment><comment><USER15> i too came here to say "use a spell-checker".

because yes, you need to do that, and not just expect that davedx did all of your work for you.

you still have a typo in the very first sentence!

and another closely follows, in the next paragraph.

i would also suggest you learn about em-dashes.

plus, aside from spelling, there is at least one text error with a side- effect, and it is comical.

all of this detracts from the design point i think was the purpose you had in mind with this exercise \-- the use of scrollmonitor.js to enhance the text.

as to that particular point, it seemed to me that the switch back to a black- background occurred at a point which was neither the best or most obvious, namely the paragraph containing "day commonly does".

(which, by the way, is a phrase that sounds... odd; indeed that whole sentence sounds rather clumsy, and it's not the only one. but i'll give a pass on that, since you've said that the piece isn't actually done.)

at any rate, i didn't even attempt to find the reason, if there is one, why the shift didn't occur "correctly", because the specifics of that could get very fuzzy fast, but since it _is_ your point, you'll want to dig deep.

overall, though, i think that even despite these flaws, you achieved the point you wanted, about scrollmonitor.

-bowerbird</comment>


Tournament Selection - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_selection <comment><AUTHOR> I often use this simple algorithm to select an entry from a sorted list:

        1: Select two random entries
        2: Discard the one with the lower rank

This is useful in many situations where you want to give a higher chance to entries with a higher rank.

Looking around the web for the name of this, the closest I found is tournament selection which seems to be a superset that contains my approach.

Is there a name for my specific approach, where you select 2 entries at random and from those select the better one?</comment>


Find Your Phone by Shouting MARCO - <AUTHOR> http://findmarcopolo.com/

<comment><USER2> Don't forget to shut down the app when going to the opera, because it will eventually yell "Polo" at the most sensible part.</comment>


Node.js used to mirror DOM across browsers - <AUTHOR> http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stUE5XQEVMRFtXQ1xVXFlYVlZX/serrano_session_sharing

<comment><USER2> I am not prone to melodramatic statements, but seeing this I had the same feeling I had the first time I started using GMail.

It's not necessarily the DOM sharing, which is cool enough. I just think that the emergence of sockets in new browsers is going to bring in the "next level", whatever that ends up being.

Seriously incredible, especially considering the development timeframe.

<comment><USER3> It's fun, yes, but at the same time, it's nostalgic.

We've had such technology for decades. There have been desktop sharing apps for years, in Java applets etc.

So whilst it's cool that the browser wars are generating a ton of improvements, none of them so far are really things that will blow users minds. HTML5 is just catching up to where other platforms were 10 years ago.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. In some ways the browser actually lowered people's expectations of what "computers" can do.

Perhaps the focus shifted.

When I first saw Wolf3D as a kid I was amazed that the computer could do that. Same when I first used a GIS.

These days when people get "excited" about something like Facebook, it's not because it's a technical achievement. It's something more human. Which perhaps is why I don't get it.

Maybe browser technology is "good enough". Perhaps the point is to be able to get apps out to people as simply as possible. It's just a URL.

Due to the fact I don't feel a point coming on any time soon I'll end here.

<comment><USER5> I think that your final point has the most explanatory power.

Everyone knows that a sufficiently geeky person can make a computer do magical things.

However, apps (in the general sense) become much more exciting when they gain wide appeal, and the difficult discovery, install, setup, and maintenance experience of earlier approaches were an enormous drag on their wide success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a cool demo; props to the guys who made it.

I have done a few demos like this, and it turns out to be surprisingly hard to turn it into a product. For instance, just because you can send over changes to the DOM, you can't necessarily reproduce the javascript side-effects, exactly. You can't just poll the state of the DOM because it doesn't reflect all of the state that lives in javascript closures that you can't even see.

One easier method, and probably what they did in this demo, is simply catch _any_ user-generated event in browser A and re-emit it in browser B, thus letting the existing javascript code / browser logic do any actual DOM/state modification.

But what happens when each user triggers an DOM event at the same time? They end up getting applied in reverse order on the two browsers. In many cases this can cause the two browsers to fall out of sync.

Anyway, I love seeing WebSocket demos, and this is pretty fun. Just be sure you realize what a rabbit hole this is if you want to make a product.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell I'd love to be able to just add a script tag to my website, and then log into some web based service which shows me a list of the current sessions on my website allowing me to click on one of those sessions and monitor their progress through the site using this dom mirroring technique.

There must be money to be made in this sort of service?

<comment><USER7> <http://www.clicktale.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for all the great feedback, everyone! This was our Node Knockout submission, so if you get a chance, please give us a vote. Give us some big points for innovation!

[http://nodeknockout.com/teams/starcraft-2-destroyed-my- marri...](http://nodeknockout.com/teams/starcraft-2-destroyed-my-marriage)

</comment><comment><USER9> Pretty cool, potentially very handy, though I wonder why they didn't synchronize scrolling.

<comment><USER10> I asked myself the same. Anyway this is an impressive demo and I voted accordingly. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really good demo. I see multiple business ideas in there.

<comment><USER12> Definitely has potential for the live support market

<comment><USER13> Actually, I have been working on something like this for some time now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like a security risk to me. If someone tricks you into starting this they could follow you to other websites and collect data.

<comment><USER15> Security risk in what? Users not paying attention to the URL bar?

<comment><USER14> Suppose I send you a link to a page I own. I start this thing on said page and track what you do with the rest of the session on the off-chance that you do something sensitive with it. It's like a single-tab key/screenlogger. Combine this with traditional phishing methods (which already work) and you might get valuable data. It's going to be at least as effective as current phishing methods, with the added advantage of not asking for personal data on the landing page as well (so users don't get scared off).

A similar attack would be to override the back button. You know those sites where the back button takes you to a redirect that takes you to the same page? Take one of those, but on the redirect page save the referring URL. Then when the user hits back, have the redirect page start the session sharing and redirect to the referrer. Sounds plenty dangerous to me.

<comment><USER16> Re: "sounds plenty dangerous to me"

Often, it's the "sounds plenty dangerous" innovations (fire, automobile, chainsaw, theory of relativity), that provide the most utility.

<comment><USER14> Oh, certainly. The fact that it can be used for evil makes it no less impressive and useful for other purposes. But thinking of this attack makes me wonder if our browser security models are getting outdated. With things like this possible, and so much valuable data being web-based these days, is there any way of using cool things like that yet avoiding the major risks?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was thinking through something like this just last night, after reading up on Smalltalk and system images. Are you loading each domain in an iframe? How did you manage to overcome Twitter's clickjacking protection? Using the new sandboxed iframe attribute? High five!

<comment><USER17> It's done via proxy, node.js, and websockets =) No iFraming. Since we're proxying, we can dynamically hijack the links and insert JS.

<comment><USER18> What are you using for server side dom manipulation? jsdom? apricot? node-xml? libxmljs? I spent a lot of the weekend working on a webcrawler, but couldn't find a xml parser that didn't choke on the internet-at-large.

Any chance you'd consider open-sourcing?

<comment><USER19> I haven't seen their code, but I'm not sure why you'd need server side DOM manipulation for this. I'd implement all of that in the browser, and just let the server handle passing events back and forth.

<comment><USER18> Since they're proxying the page, they replace all s with proxy s, as well as adding a


Doing business in CA? Prepare to disclose use of slave labor. - <AUTHOR> http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/east_bay&id=8485955

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this technically applies to "big" companies (which is probably a good thing) ...

 _A new California law that takes effect Jan. 1 requires that the more than 3,200 California companies that have gross receipts of $100 million or more have to report whether or not their supply chain uses slave labor._

... but it's still interesting.

More details: [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-california- slav...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-california- slaverytre7bt0xn-20111230,0,2734244.story)

<http://slaveryfootprint.org/></comment>


100th anniversary of Konrad Zuse: creator of the first programming language - <AUTHOR> http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~zuse/Konrad_Zuse/ <comment><USER2> The name of said language being "Plankalkül" _. Which is the best name for a programming language. Ever.

_ ("Plan Calculus" doesn't quite capture it)

<comment><USER3> What makes you think so? Do you understand German in general?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He was also one of the first to articulate the notion of the computable world. Wolfram and crew owe Zuse an intellectual debt (though as far as I know he doesn't appear in the footnotes to A New Kind of Science, big surprise).

Zuse should be a folk hero for anyone interested in the notion of a discrete, computable physics.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmmm... In 1843 Ada Lovelace wrote a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with Babbage's Analytical Engine, and is generally considered to be the first computer program. Having said that the early 19th century Jacquard looms used punch cards for pattern instructions. Hollerith expanded on this with his 1890 census.

Zuse's language was never implemented in his lifetime. You could argue the same about Lovelace's algorithm, but not about Turing machines.

Zuse certainly developed the first programmable computer (albeit an electromechanical one, the first digital one was the UK Colossus a year later) and it's certainly an amazing achievement, but not the first programming languages.

<comment><USER6> Wikipedia has more: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse>

It terms it the first _high level_ non-von Neumann programming language.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One shouldn't forget that he was a Nazi collaborator, used his skills to design bombs at Henschel among other things, and was financed by the Nazi regime right till the end of the war.

<comment><USER8> He was a German during the war. There's a difference. I think you're thinking of people like Henry Ford and Thomas Watson (founder of IBM).

<comment><USER9> There is also the difference that he properly didn't have much choice.

Thomas Watson on the other hand wasn't forced to make the punchcards the nazis used to run their census and kill the jews; he did it very, very willingly.

And Ford was given a fucking medal by Hitler.</comment></comment></comment>