Scientists have created a silicone beating heart - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/scientists-have-created-a-silicon-beating-heart/ <comment><USER2> Title is confusing. Silicon and silicone aren't the same thing.

<comment><USER3> I've always wondered why english doesn't use the word "silicium" instead of silicon

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Currently used blood pumps have many disadvantages: their mechanical parts > are susceptible to complications while the patient lacks a physiological > pulse, which is assumed to have some consequences for the patient.

Kind of weird, but apparently people with artificial hearts that _don 't_ give a pulse don't really suffer any obvious consequences:

[https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/no-pulse- how-...](https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/no-pulse-how-doctors- reinvented-human-heart)

<comment><USER5> I've often wondered, but have never heard anything one way or the other, if not having a pulse might not be better. I mean think of all of the physical things that have reduced lifespans due to pulsing. Whether it's high frequency like vibration, or low frequency like when your car's brake rotors are warped. Not only do the brakes not work as well, it's hard on wheel bearings and to a lesser extent suspension parts. Or did our vascular system evolve to rely on that pulse? Like, I dunno, helps keep arteries clear or something.

Unfortunately, last I paid attention, artificial heart patients don't live long enough to make an evaluation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How can we get something like this pushed further along, assuming you're not a scientist working on it directly?

With heart failure the number one killer in the United States, I'd like to see these things in every Hospital asap.

<comment><USER7> > I'd like to see these things in every Hospital asap

Yes sir, right away sir.

Seriously though, Ventricular Assist Devices have been available for decades. I have worked with clients who make them. You can get one today if you have heart failure through your insurance company while you're waiting for a transplant.

When they say: > The reasoning why nature should be used as a model is clear. Currently used blood pumps have many disadvantages: their mechanical parts are susceptible to complications while the patient lacks a physiological pulse, which is assumed to have some consequences for the patient.

In fact, it's not clear at all (always, always remember the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect). The first generations of VADs were pulsatile because they "assumed nature" should be a model and they had many problems in patients.

Then the next generation of continuous rotary pumps came out and are the only ones (in fact only 3 pumps today are used, HeartMate II, HeartMate III and HeartWare HVAD) that last for years. btw 180 days is the typical wait time for a transplant. Then artificial pulsatility was added to the rotary pumps, mostly out of an imaginary need for a pulse, but no one has been able to prove a pulse is necessary.

As this is a project by a materials research group, I'm confident this is a pilot project and their goal will be to improve the lifetime of the materials by X%. That means, it will be a long, long time before this style of pump is found in bodies. Notice they're not assessing thrombosis or hemolysis, etc.

If you sincerely want to reduce heart disease, focus on improving peoples' diets, exercise and stress/sleep. That will have the most effect. For many people, damage is self-inflicted and they ruin enough of their vasculature and organs that a replacement heart won't do any more than a new power supply on a dead motherboard.

<comment><USER6> >> I'd like to see these things in every Hospital asap

>Yes sir, right away sir.

If I seem a bit emotionally invested in the topic, it's because I am. My dad died from a heart attack a little under two years ago. One of the side-effects for me has been noticing articles about advancements in the field and caring about them more than I used to. If he had died from it before anyone could potentially do anything, that'd be one thing. But that's not what happened. Medical staff was on-site within minutes. They even claimed he was still alive by the time they arrived at the hospital. But still, he died. He was a month shy of 60.

Of course if he had improved his diet and shed some pounds, he might not have found himself in that situation to begin with so early, but given that heart failure is the number one killer in the US, I don't think that answer is good enough by itself. We need to get to the point that we can save people more consistently.

Heart disease killed more than 10 times as many people in 2016 as any sort of gun death in the US. We should be a lot more concerned with solving this problem as a society.

It's not just big guys like my dad who are at risk. My six year old niece has a small heart defect that could be a problem at some point. You'd think that's pretty rare, but according to some studies, that makes her 1 out of 100 kids.

This stuff needs to be fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Saw title... was "Why silicon? I mean that's a hard substance... maybe they mean because it has electronics?"

Read article... they mean silicone. Very different substance!

Silicone is reasonable well tolerated... though apparently they have a lot solve in regards to durability before such a thing is remotely viable.

</comment><comment> gene-h There are two problems with this lifetime and power supply in that order. The first is that the lifetime was only 3000 beats, which at 40 beats a minute translates to about an hour and a half of use. In comparison, the jarvik 7, one of the first artificial hearts was used in a patient for 620 days[0], which at 40 beats per minute translates to about 36 million beats.

In my opinion, I think it will be very difficult to modify this heart to last this long, especially if it experiences significant elastic deformation. To get this significant elastic deformation we need soft materials like elastomers, which don't tend to have very good fatigue properties under significant elastic deformation. The authors even admit that "this issue is a game breaker and needs to be resolved."[1] Developing elastomers that can withstand the number of cycles is quite challenging.

This heart is pneumatically powered, so the patient needs to have tubes going through the skin connecting to a pneumatic power supply. These can be bulky, they can be portable, but still somewhat bulky[2]. For something that keeping you alive, this may not matter too much if the benefits of using the device are sufficient.

Although I'm not really clear on what the benefits of using this are(I must admit I am not an expert in artificial hearts). One big claimed advantage is that they may reduce the dead spots in the heart. Dead spots are regions of low fluid flow, these are bad, because they can cause clots to form. Some artificial hearts deal with this now by having the patient take anticoagulants, so reducing them is a pretty big deal. But they have not demonstrated this. Although this is pretty difficult to do, they'd have to find a way to make the heart transparent to see the fluid flow inside.

[0][http://www.texasheart.org/Research/Devices/j7tah.cfm](http://www.texasheart.org/Research/Devices/j7tah.cfm) [1][http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aor.12956/abstrac...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aor.12956/abstract) [2][http://www.pneumatictips.com/miniaturization-makes- pneumatic...](http://www.pneumatictips.com/miniaturization-makes-pneumatics- choice-medical-applications/)

<comment><USER9> As far as I recall, this is not the first soft heart. Previous attempts were made out of synthetic fabrics alleviating many problems with elastomers, for valves and aorta patches. If these fabrics were electrically sensitive, they could beat, problem being biocompatibility.

Jarvik-7 is not a whole heart, it is an LVAD. And yes it has a pulse due to pump peristaltic action as opposed to some continuous flow devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How does this differ from carmat ? [https://www.carmatsa.com/](https://www.carmatsa.com/)

I think it's one of the most advanced, and it's been in testing phase for a few years now, I think with good results

<comment><USER10> The main difference from the POV of a patient is that Carmat's heart lasts for years while this one lasts less than an hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if we could have heart wrapping aid. For some people with partially failing heart, not structural but more like dead tissue, an external pressure help from the wrapper could help restore proper blood pressure without requiring replacement.

<comment><USER12> Something similar exists, yes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventricular_assist_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventricular_assist_device)

But it sucks to be on one and a transplant is usually better. (AFAIK, not a doctor.)

<comment><USER11> This is damn invasive. I meant something with a contractile tissue that would wrap the heart, not a secondary pump

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Video here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYNXeHfTdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYNXeHfTdQ)

</comment><comment><USER14> Is'n't the airpump still a potential point of failure?

Still this looks great, i hope it works.

</comment><comment><USER15> Agreed someone needs to create a subject checker, not just a spell checker

<comment><USER16> Although in this case the article itself made the mistake, not the HN poster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does it use as a power source?

<comment><USER17> Looks like compressed air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazing! It might save millions of people one day</comment>


Show HN: I built a CDN for our multi tenant app - <AUTHOR> https://sandeep.dev/how-i-built-a-cdn-for-our-multi-tenant-app-within-a-day-cjvc87psq003rprs1crapdpem <comment><USER2> I'm confused why you would write your own caching proxy in node?

Varnish, ATS, nginx, Apache or even squid would do what you want.</comment>


Show HN: Budgetable (It's better than Mint) - <AUTHOR> There is so much innovation that can and needs to be done in the online banking space, Mint hasn't innovated in years, so I decided to.
Some of my experiments...
http://budgetable.com <comment> jack-r-abbit > _Aggregates all your accounts, balances, net worth charts, budgets... all > that good stuff. It's fully functional personal finance software._

I'm a Mint user. Mint does all those things, no? I have all my accounts pulling in (credit, checking, savings, mortgages, car loans). I can see the balance on each. I can see all my transactions for each (both combined and filtered separately). I can manually enter transactions until they make it through the system (like entering a check so you don't forget that deduction if the person takes 3 weeks to cash it). I can build budgets. I have a grand total of my net worth (assets - debts). I get alerts when budgets are exceeded or finance fees were added. I'd say Mint has put together a nice set of features. So what else are you doing that Mint doesn't?

Edit: oh. I watched the video. So it sounds like the only thing it does that Mint doesn't do is go look for coupons/deals for the places it sees I've spent money. That has minimal value to me. Certainly not enough to make me switch from Mint. It might appeal to others not already using (or not heavily using) Mint.

<comment><AUTHOR> In addition to addressing about the ~10,000 common problems which are unresolved on Mint's support site? <http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint>

Deal alerts on your favorite stores, detects wasteful spending, a budget that actually works, deal aware transactions, API, Many many more charts/graphs, etc

<comment> jack-r-abbit Cool. I don't have any issues and I don't need the deals features so I guess I'm not your target. Best of luck to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I decided not to sign up for an invite but you almost had me. About 10 years ago or so a friend of mine and I were talking about creating something that analyzed what things you bought and then told you about where you can get it cheaper. At that time it really would't have been possible.

It's true I have seen deal alert sites but I thought you had the whole package here. I know you can't really find out what I bought at my supermarket by just looking at the credit card bill, but it'd be super neat if your site didn't tell me about the deals at supermarket A (I get that spam already) but instead find out that I buy skim milk, and let me know that supermarket B right down the road actually has it on sale this week so I should get it there instead. I want to keep buying the things I'm buying but be able to do so cheaper. Just like a gas app that finds the cheapest station, I want to know where the cheapest version of everything is that I buy regularly w/o having to look through ads or search myself or even tell a system what I buy. Build that and you got me. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess I'll be the first person to say that it looks really good. I can see how some folks might feel misled by the tag line, but even that's sort of a stretch (to me).

The landing page looks great. I did get the video bug, but that's small. Have you really done all this yourself? Looks like a TON of code.

I've also noticed Mint as being stagnant, specifically since Wesabe closed down and they were acquired, and have been hoping to see some sort of progress there. It isn't that it doesn't fully meet my needs, cause it does, but there are a TON of nice to haves that I want to see to make budgeting a lot easier that I have less and less hope of seeing with every day that passes without an update.

Can I ask what's on the roadmap?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure - and thanks for the comments/feedback. Yup, I built Budgetable by myself over the past year or so... I do UI and backend work so it worked out well.

I really tried to focus on making budgeting work.. to be honest, it was a very difficult task.. it's just a difficult problem to solve across the board (i.e., something that works for most people).

After getting through the beta, my focus will be on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From your privacy policy:

We use this information [personal information] to:

\- Assess the needs of your business to determine suitable products

\- Send you marketing communications

\- Administer contests and sweepstakes you entered, and notify you if you won

\- Conduct research and analysis

You are planning to do an awful lot of stuff with my personal financial data. One of the nice things about Mint is their transparency as well as the control they give users over their own data.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think you would convert a lot more if you used <https://budgetable.com>. Im not giving someone my account information unless it is encrypted. As a potential customer, lack of that makes me wonder how secure the backend is. Otherwise, looking forward to what you come up with

<comment><AUTHOR> The actual web app is https. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's some bug with the video. When I try to skip through it, it shows me the original Play image, and I have to press on it again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for discovering that. I'll get it fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm a minority, but I'm of the opinion that an app which touches my bank account:

1) Should put _every_ page under SSL

2) Shouldn't use the word "beta"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback -- like I said, the actual app is SSL, but you make a good point in that it's probably a good idea to have https for even the "static" landing pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any possibility of checking to see if "my" bank or financial institution is covered without having to sign up?

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks nice, but maybe you could be more specific than "Radically changing how you manage money"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback -- I'm going to do some A/B testing with that title text. It's definitely a difficult thing to get right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do you have a mobile application or a mobile-friendly site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, but it's a top priority of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I suggest using a more appropriate title. It's misleading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, still need to do some A/B testing around that.

<comment><USER11> A/B Testing? I'm talking about the post title here in HN.

<comment> jack-r-abbit ah... true. Something like "Show HN: Budgetable (It's better than Mint)" probably would have worked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's try it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Will there be an API for my data?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks great. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER14> What does this have to do with Mint? This is yet another coupon site that limits you to only the stores you already shop at.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aggregates all your accounts, balances, net worth charts, budgets... all that good stuff. It's fully functional personal finance software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ryan,

Nice design. Just signed up for beta invite. Do you mind sharing your tech stack used for front-end and backend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I'd rather not go into details about the backend stack publicly given the nature of the app -- requires intense paranoia about security, but hit me up on Twitter. @Budgetable</comment></comment>


JavaScript: Put everything in a namespace - <AUTHOR> http://www.lixo.org/archives/2007/09/14/javascript-put-everything-in-a-namespace/ <comment><USER2> This is one of the biggies on Google's Javascript style guide.

I would leave out the part about silent _not_ defining my namespace, though.</comment>


Show HN: Geens blockchain timestamping use cases - <AUTHOR> https://tokensale.geens.com/geens-use-cases.png <comment><USER2> I'm a fan of blockchain tech myself. Your page looks allright, the icons are nice. Perhaps a direct link to the Geens.com would be good so that I don't need to write it manually.

It's not clear to me if this is a mobile app or not, so not sure what I'd be signing up for. Is this a camera app which stores the picture on the blockchain? Perhaps you could shed some light on the token distribution for the not-blockchain-aware people.

Btw, if you are interested in more UX feedback, please feel free to check our free platform: [https://usability.testing.exchange](https://usability.testing.exchange)</comment>


Why YAML is used for configuration when it's so bad, what can you do about it? - <AUTHOR> https://kula.blog/posts/yaml/ <comment><AUTHOR> Found this blog when looking for fellow devs who are in the same boat. The whole pipeline-as-yaml in CI is the worst thing I had to do for my profession in the last 10y.

The iteration experience for this is so incredibly inefficient. Testability in isolation for pipelines modeled in YAML is one of the biggest regressions in the field of software engineering. It's built for day 1, whereas the challenges lie in large pipelines which you make on day 2 and afterwards.

I thought I was alone when starting out with Ansible, just because work demanded it, and found it a very strange way to do things. No composability, strange interfacing, weird semantics.

</comment><comment><USER2> One of the criticisms I heard recently about YAML is that there's no way to know if you received a full document or just a fragment since there's no grammatical structure for indicating the document is complete. While JSON and XML are far more verbose at least it's obvious if you didn't get the full document on transmission. Perhaps a compromise could be to use YAML as a compositional tool to emit XML or another more formal configuration format?

<comment><USER3> I feel this is kind of a minor issue; the far bigger issue that this article talks about is that the declarative YAML format is used as a programming language, which it's clearly not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This post strikes me as not much more than an uninformed rant. I read through it and learned nothing, except that the author has strong opinions about some YAML use cases. Lots of heat and very little light.</comment>


FizzBuzz in Too Much Detail - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomdalling.com/blog/software-design/fizzbuzz-in-too-much-detail/ <comment><USER2> It's good, but do you seriously think that's going to get past review? Here's a much better corporate-level version of FizzBuzz: [https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...](https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition)

<comment><USER3> It's so loosely coupled that it's completely lost its hold on reality

<comment><USER4> It's so loosely coupled it'd fit it at a swingers meet-up!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ruby has the added bonus of Flip Flops to make everything even more opaque!

        a=b=c=(1..100).each do |num|
          print num, ?\r,
            ("Fizz" unless (a = !a) .. (a = !a)),
            ("Buzz" unless (b = !b) ... !((c = !c) .. (c = !c))),
            ?\n
        end

Add comments as needed

Source: [http://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/2n987g/the_flip_flop_o...](http://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/2n987g/the_flip_flop_operator_in_ruby/cmbiwt8)

</comment><comment><USER6> I take serious issue with the "lesson" that this article is trying to teach at the end, which is that you should not generalize your particular problem into something abstract, solve that abstract problem really well, and then solve your particular problem as an instance of that problem.

Modeling your problem as FizzBuzz is a good way to model an unrealistically simple problem. FizzBuzz itself is only meant to filter out the vast masses of applicants who are struggling to find _anything_ in the job market and therefore apply to any job they see hoping that someone will recognize them and take pity on them. It's not a realistic starting point.

Alan Kay's words are really insightful on this matter; he says that "the right perspective is worth 80 points of IQ." If you can figure out the right way to look at the problem (the right generic problem to solve given your specific constraints) then it's like being much smarter than any ordinary programmer really is.

He gives a much more instructive example: the Windows operating system. This thing is millions of lines of code, so much that if you printed it out in textbooks it'd stretch to the top of the Empire State Building. This was produced by a bunch of people doing exactly what Tom Dalling is suggesting: work only on your specific subproblem, do not solve the generic problems of "how do I make an operating system?", etc. There's no _intrinsic_ reason that a graphical operating system needs to be so big that nobody can read it in a lifetime.

And the bugs that exist in Windows are undebuggable. With that many different components at play in the greater ecosystem, knowing which two are interacting to cause the problems that plague you requires an unbelievable amount of insight into what the computer is doing when it performs those quirks.

I agree with the specific point that _software bloat_ sucks; I'm working with Ext.JS right now and boy is it bloated with internal abstractions that don't make much sense. Fortunately they isolate other people from dealing with those abstractions, but if I were at Sencha developing on the product I'd constantly be wondering "why do we make an 'Operation object' for the thing that the user wants to do? What's the real point of that?" etc.

<comment><USER7> The point I saw (and heartily agree with) is to be deliberate. DRY is an optimization. What is the cost of DRY? What are the costs of not being DRY?

I think we frequently fall into the trap of doing DRY "because we're supposed to" rather than on a case by case basis evaluating whether or there is a net expected benefit.

That doesn't always mean taking a hard YAGNI line. There are plenty of opportunities for DRY that don't incur a big cost but enable simplicity in future development. It's fairly simple math (though it requires some degree of arbitrary numbers). <Expected cost of refactor (time and added complexity)> vs <Expected benefit (saving future time)> * <Likelihood you will need to update this code>

If you know you're most likely going to revisit the codebase in a month and it's a fairly simple refactor then go ahead and do it.

<comment><USER8> >> "Dry is an optimization. What is the cost of DRY? What are the costs of not being DRY?"

Agreed 100%.

I actually made a javascript programming game to try to find explore that balance: [http://alexrohde.com/zennish/index.html#/challenges](http://alexrohde.com/zennish/index.html#/challenges)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Articles like this one make me wonder what percent of the development community actually uses TDD.

Shouldn't it be natural, even expected, to see the tests that drove each iteration of abstraction?

I am particularly interested in how one defines and implements tests for scaling and performance requirements like the 'Lazy Generation' example.

Now the standard response will be that it's an article (or programming book, or interview question) so for the sake of brevity and clarity we omitted the test.

Wouldn't well defined tests help shape the correct amount of generalization and abstraction?

<comment><USER10> Aren't you assuming TDD is a reasonable way to drive the design of algorithms? I would not expect someone to design fizzbuzz-like functions using TDD.

(I would expect to see tests, sure, but tests aren't TDD).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I still think the "Naïve" implementation is the best one given the actual specification of the problem, and not some made-up specification and assumptions that solve a different problem than the one actually being asked (which may be more interesting, but that is beside the point).

<comment><USER12> That was the conclusion of the article, if you scroll down to the bottom. "The final implementation represents a veritable explosion of complexity".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the point is more clearly stated in the TDWTF Soft Coding article[0]

Best quotes:

> This brings us right into the definition of Soft Coding: the practice of > removing "things that should be in source code" from source code and placing > them in some external resource.

> The whole point of software (hence, the "soft") is that it can change that > it will change. The only way to insulate your software from business rule > changes is to build a completely generic program that's devoid of all > business rules yet can implement any rule. Oh, and they've already built > that tool. It's called C++. And Java. And C#. And Basic. And, dare I say, > COBOL.

[0] [http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Soft_Coding](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Soft_Coding)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm glad they got rid of the 'puts' calls in the end.

It was irking me to naively assume that you would always be asked to _print_ the answer sequence.

</comment><comment><USER15> Also see FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition

[https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...](https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition)

<comment><USER16> brillant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hardcoding 'Fizz' and 'Buzz' inhibits internationalization.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's a version in Haskell that has the same functionality:

        fizzbuzz i triggers = map (\x -> fromMaybe (show x) $
                                                   liftM mconcat (sequence triggers) x)
                                  [i..]

        fizzbuzz 1 $ [\i -> ["Fizz" | i `rem` 3 == 0]
                     ,\i -> ["Buzz" | i `rem` 5 == 0]
                     ]

Its just me playing around and trying to be clever.The way FizzBuzz can be expressed as a Monoid is cool. The rest is just plumbing.

        mconcat [Just "Fizz", Just "Buzz"] = Just "FizzBuzz"
        mconcat [Just "Fizz", Nothing    ] = Just "Fizz"
        mconcat [Nothing    , Nothing    ] = Nothing

Note that this requires {-# LANGUAGE MonadComprehensions #-} to compile. Thats for the sugar used when constructing the triggers.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure that Haskell can do better than that in the readability department.

<comment><USER18> It can, I was just trying to be clever :P

For one, I don't need to drag monads into function composition:

        fizzbuzz i triggers = map (\x -> fromMaybe (show x) $
                                                   mconcat $ triggers x)
                                  [i..]

        fizzbuzz 1 $ \i -> [["Fizz" | i `rem` 3 == 0]
                           ,["Buzz" | i `rem` 5 == 0]
                           ]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I still prefer using symbolic languages for problems of such complexity. Such as... Ruby.

[https://github.com/sferik/active_emoji/blob/master/samples/f...](https://github.com/sferik/active_emoji/blob/master/samples/fizzbuzz.rb)

</comment><comment><USER21> The ruby quiz did a round of this back after fizzbuzz had already jumped the shark the first time: [http://rubyquiz.com/quiz126.html](http://rubyquiz.com/quiz126.html)

I personally thought that my two entries were pretty amusing: [http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby- talk/...](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/254139) and [http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby- talk/...](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/254354)

</comment><comment><USER22> If I get asked fizzbuzz in an interview then I'm going to drive my interviewer insane with a switch statement.

case 0:

      print "fizzbuzz";

case 1:

      print 1;

case 2:

      print 2;

case 3:

      print "fizz";

<comment><USER23> Your solution failed to satisfy the requirements. You need to print the number for 1 and 2.

<comment><USER22> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _By extracting the modulo operator (%) into its own function, at least we 've made the code more self-documenting. If someone else were to read the code and they didn't understand how the modulo operator worked, they could work it out based on the function name._

Someone's taking the piss. Would anyone in the "audience" for FizzBuzz code (coders, managers... HR?) really not understand modulo? That seems like kind of the point of FizzBuzz.

Sure the whole thing is a satire, but this aspect is sort of straw-mannish.

<comment><USER25> Did you finish the article?

<comment><USER24> Yes that's why I specifically noted "sure the whole thing is a satire". I just felt that this particular aspect of the satire was unfair.

<comment><USER25> Apperently I didn't read the comment.

I think the point being that fizzbuzz is already a strawman of a programming excersize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Now would you consider a smarter move to do the following in an interview:

\- gem install your-fizzbuzz-package

\- require 'your-fizzbuzz-package'

\- puts FizzBuzz.range(1..100)

?

My point being why reinvent the wheel.

<comment><USER12> If an interviewer asks FizzBuzz, it means they want to do a quick sanity check that you can write code to solve a simple problem. Answer the question and the interview can move on to something more interesting.

If you try to give a "clever" answer at this point rather than collaborating with the interviewer, it's likely to give a bad impression. A good interview process isn't just looking for people who are strong programmers, it's looking for people who are good engineers - and good engineers are people who collaborate well rather than trying to prove a point at the first available opportunity.

<comment><USER27> I personally would find it a more experienced approach to look up a prewritten, tested library, used by other people.

<comment><USER28> It's not the point. At this point the interviewer isn't asking whether you can ship something, he's asking you whether you understand code or not. You need to fully comprehend what you're shipping, whether you imported it from a tested library or you built it yourself.

<comment><USER27> You should have seen the shambolic mess of a Python script I inherited from a colleague. The script was doing bash calls, to call itself with different arguments. Functions generating functions, not because of any high level of abstraction, but because she didn't know how to write a module. The code inside was more complex than fizzbuzz, but the way it was shipped was beyond terrible.

Coding something like fizbuzz is usually day one of a programming course. Using modules maybe day 2 or 3? I would see it as a sign of a more mature developer.

<comment><USER28> That's exactly the point of fizzbuzz: weed out those who clearly can't code. Only when the fizzbuzz test is passed can we start going into interesting parts, where an interviewer can assess whether you're a (truly) mature developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> That's not really an optimal way to check divisibility though, if you want to be quick try:

        fizz = (uint)i*2863311531 <= (uint)i;
        buzz = (uint)i*3435973837 <= (uint)i;

Should work for fine for i<=1000.

Edit: changed "<" to "<=", otherwise it fails when i=0.

<comment><USER30> He mentions ruby uses bigintegers, while this assumes something else, right?

<comment><USER29> The above assumes unsigned 32bit integers. It abuses integer overflow. Perhaps I should have stated that more explicitly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is the best FizzBuzz articles that has come out lately.

<comment><USER32> It helps having this article next to (nearby) the HN article discussing the 80K static coding violations in Toyota throttle position sensing code, or whatever it was exactly.

THIS article didn't get into it very much, but "obviously" you'll have four times the bugs in a highly abstracted 40 part piece of code, than in a much simpler, less capable 10 part piece of code.

Reality is bug count never scales at a rate as low as linear with code length of course.

At any rate the two HN articles are both better if read at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I only got to the parametrized version in C++ myself.

Nice reading.</comment>


Sizzle: John Resig has a new selector engine - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/sizzle-john-resig-has-a-new-selector-engine <comment><USER2> I like the fact that an interesting new technology, in this day and age, can still be less than 600 lines of code and reside in a single file.

<comment><USER3> While I'm not going to belittle your comment and the point made or try to derail the conversation needlessly, I find it equally amazing that something solved by this piece of Javascript is still an actual problem that needs solving.

Wasn't Javascript/ECMAScript, HTML and all that stuff supposed to be _standardised_? If we still need this mucking about to get a standard working, the standard or its implementation really isn't worth too much.

<comment><USER2> Well, the DOM and stuff _works_ (mostly) but it still sucks to actually _use_. This is about making a useful interface on top of it all.</comment></comment></comment>


Sen. Lindsey Graham: "I've Never Sent an Email" - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/lindsey-graham-ive-never-sent-email-n319571

<comment><USER2> While I find it hard to believe (on technicalities), I'm not surprised.

My world changed when hearing that GS's Blankfein didn't use email and used voicemail.

[http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/goldmans-love- affair-...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/goldmans-love-affair-with- voice-mail/?_r=0)

 _" On the one hand, this is hardly surprising. Goldman has long had a culture of leaving voice mail, well before e-mail became a goldmine for investigating regulators. Executives joke that they "do voice mail."

Roy Zuckerberg, a senior executive at Goldman Sachs during the 1980s and '90s, used to tell trainees that he would do more than an hour of voice mail a night. Goldman staff members check their voice mail constantly."_

</comment><comment><USER3> Not surprising and probably a good idea for anyone with a penchant for writing obnoxious things off-the-cuff. I'm sure his staffers send LOTS of email, however. Having a campaign website, lindsaygraham.com, means that there's tons of email flying around him-- it just terminates with a written report from a staffer or a piece of paper on his desk.</comment>


Warning: iPhoto 11 erases entire photo library - <AUTHOR> http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/10/warning-iphoto-11-erases-entire-iphoto.html

<comment><AUTHOR> And as expected, Mr. Gruber downplays this terrible, terrible bug. <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/10/25/castro-iphone>

If Microsoft released an update to the software which wiped out data as precious as your personal photos, there will be much more uproar.

<comment><USER2> Wow, unbelievable. Gruber appears to be nothing more than an Apple mouthpiece now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's one nasty, nasty problem.

But why would iPhoto keep the photos themselves in any other format than the original files and just point to them from the metadata store? The most I would to with the files would be to compress them using some lossless (obviously) algorithm... This way, the worst that could happen would be metadata corruption.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure iPhoto does store them in their original form—unless they were originally in RAW, in which case they get converted to .jpeg, I think.

<comment><USER3> Then why would there be a risk of data loss during a version upgrade?

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure. I'm just commenting that in iPhoto (and I just upgraded to '11) they are stored uncompressed and in their original format.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Akṣi - Handwritten-digit-recognizing neural-network - <AUTHOR> http://aksi-neural-network.appspot.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this about two years ago from scratch for an algorithms class. I didn't know much about neural networks other than the fact that they tried to mimic how neurons worked in the brain. It was a pretty neat learning- experience. Thought I would share!</comment>


His Holiness Dalai Lama: Countering Stress and Depression - <AUTHOR> http://www.dalailama.com/messages/articles/counter-stress

<comment><USER2> Seems to have been posted for this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3365289> Nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> everyone talks about the dalai lama but i think the more interesting situation is that of the panchen lama:

[http://www.zimbio.com/Dalai+Lama/articles/762/Panchen+Lama+K...](http://www.zimbio.com/Dalai+Lama/articles/762/Panchen+Lama+Kidnapped+14+years+Tibet)</comment>


What to do when stuck on a problem? Sleep. - <AUTHOR> http://www.zackyap.com/post/30716510801/what-to-do-when-stuck-on-a-problem-sleep

<comment><USER2> Anything that takes you away from the problem will help.

Take a shower if you don't have long.

I recommend walking before taking on a big problem - even if you're not stuck.

A 1h walk means you are unable to code your first solution, by the time you get back you'll be 4 iterations on in your head - you've just saved yourself 2 days.

<comment><USER3> I too find that planning code while in the shower or during a walk is much more effective than when at the computer or whiteboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, it's a short post about how sleeping might help, but there's no attempt to actually conduct a scientific experiment to find out if you get better ideas by doing that. At the very least you could do is supplement your post with some citations.

Are startup people so lazy that they rely only on seat-of-the-pant anecdotal evidences?

<comment><USER5> To be fair, he does at least reference Wikipedia, which has well-sourced statements at least partially backing up what he appears to be claiming.

<comment><AUTHOR> ^ Yeap. This. I was mainly trying to share a problem solving technique that's been working for me. I did look up Wikipedia for an explanation and linked to it. It was a pretty decent explanation with credible research sources. I'll make it more obvious that it isn't some sort of scientific self-quote.

Thanks for the suggestion and thanks for backing me up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, yes, exactly what i am doing for a long time, deliberatley. My brain works at night, i usally can not get very good sleep, but i do see lot of interesting dreams and somehow the solution presents himself at some point. Be prepared you may forgot the solution when you wake up like dreams you saw. So try to not mix them in the middle of the night ;-) And no, i cannot help with that, i can separate them somehow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I spend some time thinking through the ideas when I wake. Evernote works great for me especially when it's copy or marketing ideas.</comment></comment>


The Profitability Challenge for Challenger Banks - <AUTHOR> https://fincog.nl/blog/15/the-profitability-challenge-for-challenger-banks <comment><USER3> I think the challenge goes beyond just profitability.

I'm currently locked out of my Revolut account due to a bug on their end.

There is no telephone support and no in app support until after you are logged in. Apparently you have to contact them via Facebook or Twitter for assistance.

They are forever destined to be a toy with this kind of approach to people's money.

<comment><USER4> I was locked out of my Revolut account too, for about a day.

I was able to chat via messages in-app. But each time I did, the support person asked me to upload photos of supporting documentation to prove my own other bank cards were in my possession, that sort of thing. I duly did so, and then there would be acknowledgement followed by silence at the other end for hours. Eventually the person would log off (their status is visible) and the system would show that it was "waiting" for someone to become available to handle my query.

That "waiting for someone to become available" would typically last some 6 hours or so.

Then I'd get someone, and we'd go through another loop, going nowhere, and them going silent on me.

I read somewhere that this can go on for a week or more, which had me really worried because I'd put in about £1000 just before they locked the account, which I needed sooner than that.

I also read that their Twitter and Facebook teams are much more responsive than their Customer Service.

So I reached out on Facebook. Someone replied quickly that they'd asked somone in Customer Service to deal with my query, and... my account was unlocked about 15 minutes later.

So, all credit to Revolut's Facebook team....

<comment><USER5> This is common where the issue is something "hard" to fix, so the original employee punts it to the back of the queue and hopes someone else more knowledge takes it on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > While these challengers are successful in attracting large number of > customers, many of them haven't quite yet made profit. Simultaneously, the > larger the size, the more the losses.

I have seen this story okay out before. Startup basically grows base by losing money. Eventually they need to actually make a profit. Then come out all the dark patterns, selling of customer data, and other scummy behavior. If you are a customer of these banks be extra vigilant.

<comment><USER7> I am using Starling Bank. As far as I know they are profitable - they offer enterprise services (payment processing, etc) and use that to subsidise free consumer-facing services.

What I don't understand however is how the other challenger banks didn't see this coming. Like how do you decide to build a bank and take millions of VC funding without a reasonable path to profitability? Also I think Monzo could've done well had they not taken VC money and spent it all - they do have a good product, they could've charged a token amount for it (1£/month?) and at scale it would've been decent revenue (they're at 3 million customers now).

<comment><USER8> Guess, they can spend the £100m of the special RBS fund in the UK: [https://www.starlingbank.com/news/rbs-cif-funding- feb2019/](https://www.starlingbank.com/news/rbs-cif-funding-feb2019/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It sounds like the plan for a lot of these newer banks is to grow customer base selling services at a loss, then cross sell once they have a profitable offering (home loans etc).

I wonder how plausible it is that some of these mobile only new banks will never be profitable before they are acquired by existing legacy banks.

</comment><comment><USER10> It certainly takes time, and nothing really new. 'Building Societies', 'Coops' & 'Credit Unions' have grown over time, add features and get regulated to the point we think of them as Banks. Not all will survive of course.

</comment><comment><USER11> I worked as a VC and saw the cohorts of (non superstar) challenger bank... and omg: the more customers you have the more you lose, the more they use your product the more you lose.

<comment><USER12> Why? It seems almost impossible to take people's money, charge them fees for it, then loan it out again for interest and still lose money.

<comment><USER13> They all charge almost no fees and there is almost no money to invest for interest. Monzo is very transparent with their financials and when I checked in mid 2018 their account balances totalled a mere 150 million USD. A single rich person might have that in an older bank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These are just payment systems, like Zelle, Paypal, Stripe, etc., but running as standalone banks. The numbers indicate that's not a viable business model.

</comment><comment><USER15> always seemed to be lunacy to me, given:

\- the margins for retail banking were wiped out a long time ago

\- consumers have been used to free banking for decades (at least in the UK)

\- near-or-even-below zero interest rates for the last decade (with no signs of this ending)

\- the "legacy" competition are some of the most well captialised entities on the planet

is a "legacy" bank going to pay several billion dollars to acquire a nice app with an unprofitable business behind it? I doubt it

<comment><USER16> > \- the margins for retail banking were wiped out a long time ago

In the US retail banking is a cash cow: most of the country does not have enough money in the bank which means customers periodically pay overdraft fees.

> \- consumers have been used to free banking for decades (at least in the UK)

In the US most of consumer banks have a service fee, some as high as $15/mo.

> \- the "legacy" competition are some of the most well captialised entities > on the planet

Legacy competitors are carrying branches in the most expensive real estate markets in the world.

The problem of the upstarts is that they do not want to attack one issue and do what MCI did to AT&T ( pick one - lower overdraft fees/lower service charges/do not waste money on stuff (real estate), instead they want to completely destroy the business model by making banking free, wiping out overdraft fees and still wasting money on real estate ( headquarters/staff in the most overpriced cities etc ) and after that they wonder why they don't make money.

Here, a brilliant idea: take BoA fees, cut them in half, don't put everyone in San Francisco, issue debit cards and hire a pile of people in Ohio to do customer service a-la Discover. You will make money hand over fist and every time BOA matches your fees you make yours $0.05 less - MCI did it to AT&T and it cleaned Death Star's clock as long as it continued to do that non-sexy stuff.

I'm actually thinking in next 5-10 years we will have the likes of Capital One, Discover and Amex clean up on the banking side.

<comment><USER15> the US does seem to be approximately 20 years behind the UK and the rest of Europe from a consumer banking perspective

maybe they'll have more luck there

<comment><USER17> A lot of banks charge here in Germany. My previously free bank has started charging, presumably because of the low interest rates which make it hard to be profitable. A couple of online only banks are still free if you have enough turnover, however. Germany has a crazy number of small banks, compared to the likes of he UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Monzo and Revolut doing -58M and -40M a year. Ouch. Didn't see that coming.

I guess better cash the paycheck somewhere else before they're the next MoviePass.

<comment><USER19> Aren't the accounts insured by government entities like the FDIC in the US?

<comment><USER20> In the UK current account deposits are insured up to £85k.

Northern Rock went pop ~8 years ago and the public did not lose money - <USER2> government did though.

<comment><USER18> Makes one wonder what's the procedure and how long it takes to get the money back.

Either way, it can't be a good experience to be stranded with no card, no bank account, and the bit of money you had all frozen indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are there any challenger banks with an API? I'm not entirely sure what I'd do with one but it seems like a neat idea.

<comment><USER22> The EU's PSD2 (second Payment Services Directive) specifically introduces the concept of Third Party Providers (TPPs) that are allowed to interact with your bank account on your behalf either to collect/aggregate information or to initiate payments. These of course require an API to do so, but unfortunately, within the same piece of legislation, the TLA 'API' unfortunately suffers a namespace collision with "Authorised Payment Institution", a lesser kind of online banking institution a step below the full EMI (Electronic Money Institution).

I'm currently heading a project to set up such an institution so I'm into this stuff up to my neck.

<comment><USER21> > I'm currently heading a project to set up such an institution so I'm into > this stuff up to my neck

What's the project? Any links?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Possibly related: N26 (in the UK) possibly closing accounts of people who make too many withdrawals.

[https://www.revk.uk/2019/03/what-are-n26-bank-up- to.html](https://www.revk.uk/2019/03/what-are-n26-bank-up-to.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> There's a catch 22 problem here I think. As least for me, a large part of the reason I'm not willing to commit to any of these banks as a primary account is precisely because they are unprofitable. Most people know what happened to banks when they ran out of money to fund their losses in 2008/9 and how that worked out for their customers (took months for people to get their money back).

It's not like eg Uber where I take very little financial risk as a customer because I only pay them once the transaction is complete so as a consumer I don't need to care about whether they're sustainable as a business.

Add in their treatment of web and telephone as second class citizens at best (I don't need a branch but I do need the website to be capable of being used as a primary access method and I do need decent telephone support), and I'm not surprised that most people won't trust them.

<comment><USER25> Does the UK or EU not have deposit insurance? In the US, as long as the FDIC insures it I wouldn't blink an eye. (They cover $250K at a single institution.)

(It's also why Robinhood in the US initially got in trouble for its checking & savings account, because as an investment broker it is _not_ subject to the FDIC but the SIPC, which does not have the same exact guarantees.)

<comment><USER24> It does but (i) I'm not sure how many people actually trust it, (ii) it's limited to GBP100k per customer per institution I think, assuming they are UK regulated banks, so they may struggle to get big deposits and (iii) the time and administrative hassle of getting your money back may be a problem. The experience during the crisis was that it took months for some people to regain access to their money in some instances, even though it was covered by one scheme or another. That is supposed to have been improved upon since, but it hasn't been tested with a large scale bank failure and it's not clear if a mass migration of accounts could even be done seamlessly. Eg see the catastrophe of TSB trying to change their own backend in an operation which had been planned for years. In the mean time, people might miss mortgage and other critical payments for example, and for most people I suspect it just isn't worth the risk. I certainly wouldn't risk it with my own money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am curious why Transferwise was not mentioned at all...

<comment><USER27> Transferwise is more of a middleman IMO. I wouldn't use them in lieu of a bank but they are wonderful to use as a money dispatch.</comment></comment>


Kosada announces public beta of quartz composer competitor Vuo - <AUTHOR> http://kosada.com/News/VuoBeta

<comment><USER2> I really want to get excited about this, but the lack of an open source-first strategy is major cause for concern.

Why not take this to ShopLocket.com or Kickstarter and trust the community to do the right thing? Something like this is a huge step in the right direction, but closed source is going to cost momentum.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed.

Same for the late and uncertain schedule for Windows and Linux releases.

Hoping Kosada will adapt their strategy and roadmap.</comment></comment>


Give your programmers professional tools - <AUTHOR> http://programmingzen.com/2010/12/28/give-your-programmers-professional-tools/ <comment><USER2> That article is Amazon affiliate hotlink heaven. All items mentioned are Amazon links with referral code hidden behind a domain redirect. I initially expected to get another article on the item I clicked on. But the links serve no purpose than to make some money off referrals.

<comment><AUTHOR> I use Amazon affiliate links on my blogs when I refer people to products. The redirector is there as it is much easier for me to link to /?XXXXXXX when I compile posts, than manually build links from the Amazon Associates site. From the disclosure on the site:

"Some of the links contained within this site have my referral id, which provides me with a small commission for each sale. Think of it as a form of tipping for the large investment of time I put into this site. Thank you for your support."

<comment><USER2> There's a good way to do this and a bad way. One good way is to make the link text specific to a unique product. If 'Sony 30" XXX-700' was used as the link text, instead of 30" Monitor it would be a detailed link telling the user that they're going to a page specific to that item. Another option is to put all your referral links at the bottom of the post and highlight some of the best 30" monitors to choose from. Same for all the other product types you linked to.

The bad way is to link a nondescript phrase like 30" Monitor to a random 30" monitor on Amazon. It doesn't provide any basis to understand why you linked to that specific monitor. Are you recommending that monitor specifically? Is that the only one out there? Etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was aiming for an example of a pretty sweet setup (SDD+Monitor+Chair), but I can see why using specific anchor texts would have been more user friendly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> No. Give them the tools they WANT. It doesn't matter if the tool has been labeled 'professional' by a major corporation that makes the tools. It only matters that it does what the programmer wants it to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't believe the two things are mutually exclusive. You can have a standard professional "package" for new developers, but allow them to customize it if they feel so inclined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A happy developer sharing with the world that he has a 30" monitor and a powerful computer and etc, even if it comes close to luxury, may well be more efective than any talent recruiting marketing campaign

</comment><comment><USER5> Ironically, this is exactly what I have at home, but not what I have at work. 30" monitors are "not approved" and SSDs are "not tested by the regulatory agencies".

(Actually, I have a 24" monitor at home. Holding off on the 30" until I implement better window management in Emacs.)

</comment><comment><USER6> There may be big companies that don't understand this, but are there really any HN readers that don't find this obvious?

</comment><comment><USER7> One of my developer refused to get a bigger screen (19' at the moment). Should I force him to upgrade ? :)

<comment><USER8> No, I think a nineteen foot monitor is already taking a good thing too far.

But please post a pic of the office that fits it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> i suspect pro^H^H^H expensive tools hinder creativity</comment>


What's Wrong With EdTech - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tabuleapp.com/2013/01/25/why-edtech-needs-focus/

<comment><USER2> While I like the idea of tabule, I think not targeting Android in education oriented apps is a mistake. A lot of students don't necessarily have enough money to shell out for an iPhone, while cheap Android phones are everywhere (at least that's what I see in the UK).

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. We wanted to get the iPhone app out the door, but we definitely have plans to build support for Android too. In the meantime, we do allow students to use Tabule over SMS. It's not the same, of course, but works for a temporary measure.</comment></comment>


Qt - A cross-platform application and UI framework  - <AUTHOR> http://qt.nokia.com/

<comment><USER2> This isn't really news... Qt has been around sense 1992

<comment><USER2> A better link would be something like <http://opensource.nokia.com/Starlight> which is the multi-touch webkit work that nokia just put up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Breaking news! "Linux - a free, open source, unix-like operating system - click for more info!"

<comment><USER4> My smart alec response was going to be "C++ - Object oriented C!" but I think that one's better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A good website, but hardly news. I am quite excited about PySide though.

<comment><USER6> I share the hope for PySide. It's a shame how poor the options currently are for cross platform gui development. Qt, python, and an LGPL license will be fantastic...

<comment><USER5> PyQt is quite nice, but I am eager for an LGPL version.</comment></comment></comment>


A Power so Great it can only be used for Good or Evil - <AUTHOR> http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2010/12/power-so-great-it-can-only-be-used-for.html

<comment><USER2> This is a thoughtful review of Kevin Kelly's "What Technology Wants." The book itself is very thought-provoking, so much so that I haven't stopped thinking about it since reading it a month or so ago. The criticisms in this review are certainly valid, and this is one of those books I doubt anyone could agree 100% with, but what is missing from this review is an appreciation for Kelly's valiant attempt to grapple with the enormity of what technology has wrought, and the even greater enormity of what technology seems poised to do in the future. That's what kept me thinking since I put the book down and, while I am not sure I'll end up exactly where Kelly is, I have to give him a great deal of credit for a big think that really stimulated my synapses.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. You are right -- Kelly should be given some credit for trying to come to grips with really big issues. But I don't think his approach, which amounts to inflating technology into a cosmic, autonomous, and unstoppable force is the right one. It breeds passivity, and the opposite of that is what's needed.</comment></comment>


Nobel laureate Robert Shiller ate cat food in the name of research - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/robert-shiller-ate-cat-food-2015-9?r=US&IR=T <comment><AUTHOR> "The book's basic argument is that free markets creative incentives for businesses to "phish."

This means that markets incent these businesses to sell bad products or peddle misinformation to customers."

<comment><USER2> It's written by two Nobel Prize winners, so there must be something to it. But to me that sounds like common sense.</comment></comment>


The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf] - barry-cotter https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2320-2347_Online.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Despite completing degrees in philosophy, I've never experienced the sort of "Socratic" method that is apparently practiced in law schools. I gather that the harm consists, not in the general method of posing questions, but the way that professors put students on the spot and may humiliate them if their answers are unsatisfactory. The point the author makes about the way that this ritual enforces hierarchy is interesting, too (my impression is that many aspects of elite law schools do this).

I guess you might defend the "Socratic" method as a way of encouraging student engagement. But I suspect that it really appeals to people who like the idea of discourse as combat (DEBATE ME!). As an aside, I'm struck that students in most other contexts have nearly the opposite attitude. That is, they maintain that they should be free to zone out or play with their phones or skip class altogether as long as they don't disturb others.

<comment><USER2> > Despite completing degrees in philosophy, I've never experienced the sort of > "Socratic" method that is apparently practiced in law schools

The socratic method isn't really practiced anywhere in academia. Even in philosophy classes, it's mostly passive learning through an authority figure. It's why so many students take notes. You can't take notes while participating in a socratic discussion. Also, socratic method requires a small group ( preferably 1 on 1 ) where you throw questions and answers back and forth. In a class of 20 or 200, that's simply not practical.

A parent and a child sometimes engage in socratic discussions. The kid asks a question, parent answers, then the kid ask question in relation to the answer and then the parent might ask "why do you think that is" and back and forth.

The socratic method requires a lot of investment on both parties/sides. Whereas passive learning doesn't require much investment. Professor lectures and the students copies what he says.

<comment><USER3> Why would it be impossible to take notes during discussion of questions and answers? If it is, then the whole discussion was likely about speed and reflex instead of thought out answers (which takes a bit more time and is slower).

<comment><USER4> the mental environment is wits, response and inquiry in real time.. it is a different cognative mode than writing notes. Notes are actively discouraged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always found the term "Socratic Method" to be interesting, as it usually just means that they ask a lot of questions, using them to make the students demonstrate knowledge of the material and defend or abandon their ideas of what the meaning of the law is. From my philosophy classes, however, I remember Plato's Socrates was using questions more like a prosecutor, as a way of rope-a-doping the interlocutor to make him say something contradictory or unreasonable, and then Socrates would knock him out.

<comment><USER6> If you take Socrates at his word, I think he is sincerely trying to find answers. He asks a question that he really wants to know the answer to, but then sees potential flaws in the answer, so he asks more questions to test the strength of the answer. Even though he ends of "knocking out" his interlocutor, I think he would prefer to get an answer that holds up to scrutiny.

I think the value of good Socratic questioning is to get the student to examine his assumptions and to learn to think more deeply. However, it can easily become an intimidating bullying session if done incorrectly.

<comment><USER7> As applied in law school, the idea is that the professor never answers a question or makes a direct statement of his own. It's difficult to bully someone in that situation. Granted, IME some professors were better than others at abstaining from interjecting their own claims directly. But from a pedagogical perspective I'll take the professor who bullies over having to sit through hours of lectures. At least he has to work for it, and students quickly learn the score.

One of my professors with whom I would have disagreed most vehemently when it came to contemporary social, political, and even legal issue was eminently capable of sticking to the method. Never once, IIRC, did he answer a question (posted by himself or a student) or directly interject a statement of law and its application. His Constitutional Law course was most memorable (and cherished) for the way he challenged me and everybody else. He also taught a seminar, Jurisprudence Readings, that was popular enough that other professors would enroll. In my class the readings were Plato's Republic and Laws. One professor left after a few classes, quite obviously because he was frustrated by the strict Socratic Method. This professor kept trying to interject his interpretation of other Plato and Xenophon works to try to "correct" the direction the class discussion was going, but the professor leading the seminar wouldn't have it. This student-professor was visibly annoyed on occasion, which felt a little uncomfortable. (I wonder if he felt "bullied". Perhaps it didn't occur to him that he wasn't the only well read student.) I took one of his classes the prior semester and wasn't surprised; he didn't apply the Socratic Method very rigorously in his class, which was closer to a traditional college course where both lecture and class discussion closely tracked the narrative of the textbook.

I did see what one might call bullying in law school, but it wasn't tied to the Socratic Method, per se. The Socratic Method requires that each and every student come to class prepared, having at least read all assigned material. "I don't know" isn't an answer; you at least have to be able to say something like, "the material said [insert reference], but I didn't understand how it applies". If you can't do that, you obviously didn't come prepared and some professors will call you out on it. Likewise if you're called in class and can't respond because you've lost the context. A law degree still _means_ something these days precisely because students, especially 1Ls, are _flunked_ out of school.[1] And you can't cry you weren't warned. Good professors give you _ample_ , _unambiguous_ warning in _public_.

[1] Not because you didn't respond properly in class. For most classes your grade is entirely determined by the final exam. But precisely because you're not typically graded on other assignments, the professor is doing you a favor by keeping the pressure on during class. Sometimes you could have easily aced a course simply by cramming a couple of weeks before the class; sometimes not. Neither you nor the professor can be sure, and in any event if class time is to have any value everybody needs to be engaged.

<comment><USER8> > The Socratic Method requires that each and every student come to class > prepared, having at least read all assigned material. "I don't know" isn't > an answer; you at least have to be able to say something like, "the material > said [insert reference], but I didn't understand how it applies". If you > can't do that, you obviously didn't come prepared and some professors will > call you out on it. Likewise if you're called in class and can't respond > because you've lost the context.

This was the most valuable part for me; it required you to a) have actually done the background material, b) be engaged enough in the classroom to follow the context of the discussion, c) to be able to form an opinion even if you did not have one, and d) to be able to consider the merits of an alternative opinion.

These are fundamental life skills, especially so in the legal profession, and in my opinion form the basis of engaging with other people as people: understand their context, engage with them in discussion, consider what they say, and be willing to share your thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I spent 15 years coaching college paintball and the Socratic method was invaluable to me in getting important topics across.

Why?

The problem:

\- Paintball has game theory that is very different from traditional sports

\- Most people haven't had 15 years of playing time when they get to college and want to play paintball (as opposed to say, soccer).

\- I needed to get people up to speed quickly.

So here is an example of how I used the Socratic method (and hopefully you learn something too!):

\- Me: Given two teams A and B, what are the odds that A beats be? This is not a trick question.

\- Player: 50%?

\- Me: Correct! Now if someone on team B gets eliminated what are the odds of team A winning? In other words, what are the odds of winning a 5 vs 4? This is kind of a trick question as I had to collect a lot of stats to determine this.

\- Player: I don't know, somewhere between 60 and 80%??

\- Me: Close! That's what most people guess and the correct answer is 75%. Next question: if you are on team A and you are eliminated, what happens to team B's odds of winning?

\- Player: I guess they would go from ~25% to 50%

\- Me: In other words...?

\- Player: They double!

\- Me: Right! So what do you think is the most important thing to do if you are in a 5 v 4?

\- Player: Stay alive?

\- Me: Excellent!

Had I just told people "Don't get eliminated in a 5v4! Do you understand?" and they said "Yes!" I wouldn't really know if they understood or not.

This is why, when talking to tech folks, I often explain the Socratic method as a cross between programming and debugging.

The questions you ask a. allow you to "debug" the thought process of the person you are speaking too and b. can act as a directed linked list to an end state you are looking for.

I would also add, the Socratic method can be done completely with positive reinforcement. B.F. Skinner is famous for saying "People would be amazed what can be achieved with only positive reinforcement."

That being said, some organizations e.g. law schools, the military etc believe that the anxiety in a more punishment based system causes the information to "stick" better.

YMMV.

<comment><USER10> >Had I just told people "Don't get eliminated in a 5v4! Do you understand?" and they said "Yes!" I wouldn't really know if they understood or not.

That seems like less of an issue of using the Socratic method, and more about quantifying the cost of getting killed. "Dying costs your team X" is more helpful than "don't die". The former tells you under which conditions the heuristic "don't die" is no longer applicable, while the latter doesn't.

Or, to use my attempt at a neologism, your method satisfies the Scylla- Charybdis Heuristic, while "Don't get eliminated" doesn't: [http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2015/12/the-scylla- charybd...](http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2015/12/the-scylla-charybdis- heuristic-if-more.html)

<comment><USER11> The lesson is "quantifying the cost of getting killed".

The method by which that lesson is conveyed to the student is the Socratic method.

The point is that the Socratic method of asking leading questions and building agreement at each stage was more effective in getting the point across than "do you understand X? OK, good."

The student constructs the knowledge him/herself and internalizes it better than otherwise.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it's better than asking if they understand the assertion of the point, but the parent was giving a misleading comparison to something that stripped out _both_ the Socratic questions and the quantification of the cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I do SWE coaching and training. The topics vary: React, BDD, TDD, Serverless, delivery performance (previously known as DevOps), agile, etc...

Very few things work when you're trying to help someone "see the light". They are, in order of usefulness:

1\. Pain experienced from bad choices

2\. The socratic method

Everything else is varying degrees of useless.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, it is nice to see someone going straight for the details. Do we have any context on why this ... short novel :) ... was written?

I want to interpret this as a coinciding of two things; the first that the "Socratic Method" as described here would be a powerful method of creating and perpetuating a culture amongst law students trained at Harvard; where their opinions and beliefs are subjected to a very public examination and then reshaped to be what the professors think they should be. Not a terrible idea, that seems like a valid interpretation of what teaching should be, with many warts as noted.

And the second is the philosophy that gets mentioned a few times in the article that there are topics that are "too hot to handle" that might "injure" a student. Part of the fringe push to redefine "injury" to mean hearing something unpleasant or disagreeable.

So my assumption is that the author sees a crisis approaching the law school where it must take a stand on what its objective is - preserving a culture, relaying uncontroversial material to students, or some other path. And then this pdf is balanced factual synthesis of the issues at hand - I'm not sure the author is even proffering a conclusion.

If that assumption holds then there are some points raised here that could have profound influences in 10 or 20 years. Law students eventually become lawyers then judges, and unfortunately the US political class seems to be sourced heavily from the lawyers (~40% of Congress, I think). If confrontation is de-emphasised in the classroom, that could have spillovers into the heart of how political debate and distribution of justice is undertaken.

But I don't know enough about "Jeannie Suk Gersen" or why she wrote this to form a strong opinion on the topic apart from wishing lawyers were trained to write reports.

<comment><USER14> IANAL, and so have no opinion on the merits of her article.

However, I have concerns about "topics that are 'too hot to handle'" in the sciences. For example, a recent thread[0] about Hill (2017) An elementary mathematical theory for the variability hypothesis.[1,2,3]

And by the way, there's lots of great discussion in the comments on the Quillette article.[1] And it's interesting that the deleted NYJM paper is online.[2] So what, are there now two different papers at New York J. Math. 23 (2017) that begin at p. 1641? Strange.

edit: Earlier versions of the preprint were apparently more controversial.[4]

0) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318)

1) [https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send- a-p...](https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published- paper-down-the-memory-hole/)

2) [http://nyjm.albany.edu/j/2017/23-72v-orig.pdf](http://nyjm.albany.edu/j/2017/23-72v-orig.pdf)

3) [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf)

4) [https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184v2](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184v2)

<comment><USER15> Please don't take HN threads off topic into generic ideological tangents. Those are predictable and tedious.

<comment><USER14> Sorry. I let myself get triggered :(

<comment><USER15> It happens to all of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> tl;dr? Long article, title is vaguely interesting, but without a summary I have no idea if I want to invest the time reading it

</comment><comment><USER17> Well, it looks like the college snowflakes are now in law school. We should not be analyzing anything using the insidious concept of Intersectionality, where the more victim groups you have, the more credibility you have. Notice the author mentions she is a female Korean immigrant (+3!).

The whole intersectionality movement was developed from neo-Marxist feminist critical theory, which creates a vast consipiracy of the white male partriarchy. None of it is based in sound social science, but is instead based on the subjective feelings of the person involved. The article really doesn't address how well the Socratic dialog works, which is a valid issue. Instead it focuses on whether it is part of the so-called white male patriarchy, which is not a valid issue. Is the Socratic Method abused by tyrannical law professors like Professor Kingsfield? It certainly makes good dramatic entertainment. There are tyrannical players in every system. Let's throw Intersectionality out the window and analyze teaching methods on whether they work or not, instead of whether they are part of the vast white patriarchy conspiracy.

I'd love to see this Intersectionality analysis in court. "But your honor, I'm a female Korean immigrant, so you must give my argument more weight!"

Setting aside the faux Intersectionality analysis. Does the Socratic Dialog work? For first year law students, yes. The Socratic Dialog uses the most valuable tool for a lawyer: the question. You find out the basic facts of a case by asking your clients questions. You find out the opposing side's defense by asking questions. You gather evidence by asking witnesses questions.

What they teach in law school is not the law. The law changes daily. What they teach is legal reasoning. You study cases, which are written expositions of legal reasoning. In law school class, you must explain the legal reasoning of the cases. The professor's questions help guide you through this process. If this is traumatic for you, you should consider dental school.

<comment><USER15> Would you please keep the ideological rant aspect out of your comments to HN? It has a reliably degrading effect on discussion, and we're trying for better than that here. Your comment would be both better and shorter with those bits edited out.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER17> I appreciate your feedback. The law review article in the original post analyzed the Socratic Method using Intersectionality. Most people aren't familiar with this political ideology, so I critiqued it. I would not describe this as an "ideological rant". As a litigator, my writing style tends to be direct and forceful. But, I have read the guidelines again and will keep your comments in mind for future posts.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: MD5 Encrypt and Decrypt – No Ads, No Captcha, Free API - <AUTHOR> https://md5.deathlyf.com/ <comment><USER2> Thank you for offering this free service to us!</comment>


Show HN: Automate the way you keep your girl happy - <AUTHOR> http://surprisr.co/

<comment><USER2> If you use this service (or anything similar), you deserve to get dumped. Women aren't dogs that you "keep happy" by buying them things. And gifts aren't something you can outsource without losing everything that makes it valuable.

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is the case for everyone. With my wife and I, I'm great at expressing loves in some ways (time together, helping out, general affection) but gift giving is not one of them - I never really got excited by gifts, I never think about buying them, and I always choke when I have to go shopping for a gift. I'm not a good gift buyer.

Having said that, the few times I've gotten gifts, my wife loves it. If there's a service that helps me a) periodically remember that giving gifts is a thing that guys can do, and b) suggests a few good options, from which I can choose the most appropriate for my wife, why not?

The romance of gift giving is in that the person took deliberate effort to brighten your day. If that effort involved asking somebody else to help me out, because I want to surprise her with something I'm not good at on my own, then that is still thoughtful / loving / romantic - I'm still doing it because I'm thinking of her and wanting to show love.

I'd be interested to use this once it launches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this thing insulting or is that just me?

</comment><comment><USER5> I lol'd then signed up.</comment>


Elevation Dock: The best dock for iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hop/elevation-dock-the-best-dock-for-iphone/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this, support has been overwhelming.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks amazing.

<comment><USER4> Flagged.

user: mcoate created: 1 hour ago

user: jdloaner created: 1 hour ago

<comment><AUTHOR> lol. NOT the same person...</comment></comment></comment>


The Open Source Obstacle Course (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBxxZDWPiXI <comment><AUTHOR> Video response for "Why I still don't contribute to open source" (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2510964>) by Gregory Brown.</comment>


Martin Shkreli launches website to shame pharma greed, sleaze - <AUTHOR> http://www.pharmaskeletons.com/ <comment><USER2> Honestly, I quite like Shkreli. His YouTube videos are helpful [0], and he is transparently offensive rather than secretly so.

I'm much more turned-off by people that hide in the shadows. Shkreli might exploit the system, but he'll do so in a way that makes it patently obvious which doors need to be closed, and he'll make a joke of it while he does it.

Seems to me he's the George Hotz of the pharmaceuticals industry.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA/videos)

<comment><USER3> Watch the video of Martin engaging directly with a furious HIV positive person: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXVQOZDKlRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXVQOZDKlRE)

<comment><USER4> Why do you say he was furious? They had a pretty rational discussion.

<comment><USER5> But would you have clicked if he hadn't said "furious"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know I'm going to get shit for this. But what Shkreli did is common practice, and us disgracing him is Liberals using Alternative Facts. Where in the real world it's common to buy an outdated drug that many people don't use. Raise the price on it and try to innovate the drug into being a better drug, by using the increased profits. He just got himself into trouble because he doesn't know how to handle himself on twitter. I urge people to research this and look further into it, instead of having quick answers. There's a reason he wasn't convicted of anything. Sure, hike pricing drugs does sound evil and I get why people are mad. We want to live in a world where everybody has access to affordable healthcare, but sometimes the way things work aren't always simply put.

It's just as easy to make the tech industry look like a piece of shit. Especially with AI and self-driving cars. How dare Gooogle and YC take away jobs from hard-working middle-class Americans. It's almost worse, instead of price gouging, tech is going to take away jobs of many if not all Americans in the near future, but nobody on here wants to state that fact and say how sleazy tech is.

Now is more important than ever to be truthful with ourselves and how the world works and not get hyped up over shit, until we understand the whole process. Let's problem solve instead of name call and understand the process of things. Like how YC is testing a universal wage for people in Oakland.

<comment><USER7> _> But what Shkreli did is common practice_

How does this justify anything? Lots of sleazy things are common practice. Some are legal, some are illegal. Commonality and legality aren't really strong justifications for anything.

Shkreli may have been singled out in the court of public opinion, but that doesn't make what he did any less contemptible.

 _> It's just as easy to make the tech industry look like a piece of shit... but nobody on here wants to state that fact and say how sleazy tech is._

Really? Because I literally haven't seen a single self-driving thread on HN in the past _several years_ that doesn't contain a highly-voted and somewhat lengthy comment thread about this.

See also literally every HN UBI thread for the past several years.

And that's just comment threads. Yesterday alone there were two stories _on the front page_ for most of the day about social consequences of self-driving.

So it seems like people -- especially self-driving people -- _are_ thinking about this, have a wide variety of opinions on the trade-offs. And when they believe as you do, often actively advocate for policies that would help the people whose jobs they might displace.

There's also the fact that technology (both self-driving and drugs) brings good along with the bad. Perhaps if Shkreli had _created a new drug_ and then price gouged that drug, the situation might be a bit more comparable. But that's not what happened.

 _> Now is more important than ever to be truthful with ourselves and how the world works and not get hyped up over shit_

Or, in Shkreli's case, understand how the world works _and also_ get hyped up over shit. His business model should be illegal.

<comment><USER8> So you're saying that he should sell the drugs at a low cost, forgoing profits, for what exactly? Service to the US people? If you want companies to give up most of their profit just to be nice, then create laws to do so. Either have a socialised R&D system, or make it easier for other companies to create generics.

Nothing besides the FDA is stopping a competitor from selling generic Daraprim. And if it's not economically viable, then maybe the government should contract at fixed prices to ensure the availability of otherwise unfeasible drugs.

<comment><USER7> This defense of crooks on the basis that the system is broken is a bit ridiculous. The morality of their behavior is an independent issue. It's possible that the system is broken and also the people who exploit those flaws are assholes.

By analogy, insecure software is both common and also often inexcusable. Incentives are not aligned to encourage secure software. That's a real structural problem. But those problems don't make credit card theft morally permissible.

Also, I think what Martin does should be illegal. And also that the behavior is reprehensible even when it's not illegal. Criticism and action aren't mutually exclusive...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He's an attention whore, please stop giving him what he wants. [0] [1] [2]

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- intersect/wp/2017/01...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- intersect/wp/2017/01/08/martin-shkreli-was-suspended-from-twitter-for- targeted-harassment-of-a-journalist/)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/arts/music/martin- shkreli...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/arts/music/martin-shkreli- releases-parts-of-wu-tang-clan-album-after-trump-victory.html?_r=0)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/02/martin- shkr...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/02/martin-shkreli- rattled-by-sydney-high-schoolers-who-cooked-2-malaria-pills)

</comment><comment><USER10> Direct link to Shkreli's website: [http://www.pharmaskeletons.com](http://www.pharmaskeletons.com)

<comment><USER11> The code for this site is very much in line with the tone of the message.

<comment><USER12> What's wrong with the code? It's just HTML. Do you expect some NodeJS responsive React Web 3.0 app for this? I think the format, layout and code for the website is entirely appropriate for this.

<comment><USER11> The site is exactly what it should be. Politics aside, both the code and content are just straight to the point which I find very refreshing in an age of all React everything where every step along the way needs approval from a bunch of different people before anything gets done.

He sat down and said what he needed to say. At least he's not afraid to speak his mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Shkreli very much reminds me of Yiannopoulos; they are both trolls in real- life, and their only strength is yielded from driving up notoriety in the media and online and staying relevant due to that. Yiannopoulos does however have what looks like a stable platform (Breitbart), but this article implies that Shkreli doesn't, so if people really want to oppose him, the best way is to ignore him and let his ejection from the Pharma circle be complete.

</comment><comment><USER14> Congress could solve this problem tomorrow with the stroke of a pen, but they won't. Just set a ceiling on what their profit margins can be, like a public utility. Done.

<comment><USER15> Like they won't get around it with Hollywood accounting.

<comment><USER14> Defeatism is the reaction they're hoping for, you know. We actually do have the power to make changes happen despite what we've been told.

<comment><USER15> Just control the drug prices like other industrialised nations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This man could be a folk hero if he continues down this path. It's fascinating that people think Shkreli is a villain, when all he did was put an actual face on how a broken facet of healthcare works in the United States.

</comment><comment><USER17> But see how he does it in such a pleasant manner. Wow what a piece of work. /s

<comment><USER18> Oh I agree but if he's able to put up some documentation/proof that his claims are valid than I'm OK with how and by whom it's delivered.

But maybe that's too much to hope and he's just slinging mud. Hard to tell without digging into the details but the article does say this:

 _Not all his claims are backed up, explained, or accurate. But the site still offers an embarrassing catalogue of bad deeds, which Shkreli told STAT he would continually update._

I'm hoping Ars wouldn't have published the article at all unless they put at least some stock in his claims.

<comment><USER19> I expect each of the dirts will trigger a libel suit in a few days, even if he did post facts with documentation. He might be able to win most of them, but he's going to spend a mountain of cash just defending them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I feel like it is a classic political move to put a face to an issue like this.

California, seemed to do the same thing, by having patrons ask for water at restaurants. Obviously, the benefits of this weren't just that the directly saved water, but the indirectly saved water of making people think twice about water usage.

Regardless, I think most people like thinking in the concrete rather than the abstract, which makes it easy to shit on a specific person like Martin Shkreli, instead of the whole pharma industry.

</comment><comment><USER21> Novartis:. Creates a huge "nonprofit" foundation in San Diego, claims tax deduction for research and transfers IP to self... Until the IRS intervenes. At some point the professor running the place gets embroiled in two mini- scandals about possibly fraudulent science perpetrated by postdocs in the lab and is asked to leave so he can focus on more closely monitoring his employees. They did some pretty cool structural biology, though.

<comment><USER21> Pfizer: triggers a constitutional crisis by bribing a city to declare low and middle class neighborhoods as blighted to develop a factory, case goes to supreme Court; despite winning reneged on promise to build factory. Then shutters a factory in Lansing, forcing employees to move to the more expensive San Diego, then lays off 2/3 of their site there, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Url changed from [http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/disgraced-shkreli- lau...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/disgraced-shkreli-launches- website-to-shame-pharma-greed-sleaze/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER23> Shkreli epitomizes the problem, but he definitely isn't the source of it. These things were happening when he was in diapers.

</comment><comment><USER24> In what way is he "disgraced"? The article never really makes that clear

<comment><USER13> The first sentence and first paragraph of the article says

>This week, a pharmaceutical trade group stepped up its efforts to distance itself from Martin Shkreli, the disgraced ex-CEO of several drug companies who gained notoriety for an eye-popping drug price increase and an indictment for securities fraud. The trade group even made a television ad to try to bolster its image and make clear that it is different—better—than the likes of Shkreli and his greedy ways.

<comment><USER24> I read that, but I was expecting something (new) that disgraced to be an event focused by the article since the events mentioned in that sentence have already happened. While those events could cause someone to be disgraced, he hasn't seemed disgraced in the slightest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interestingly, his website is blocked at the NIH: [http://i.imgur.com/9Pn3LMk.png](http://i.imgur.com/9Pn3LMk.png)</comment>


Cutcsv: Unix cut for CSV files - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robmiller/cutcsv

<comment><USER2> 3 Things:

\- It uses Ruby... Linux command line people don't like ruby dependency. Perl,awk,sed & Python are the "allowed" ones for sysadmin/devops

\- It violates the linux command line spirit "Do one thing, and do it well" (it does two)

\- I much prefer this: [https://github.com/dbro/csvquote](https://github.com/dbro/csvquote)</comment>