Psilocybin for major depression granted Breakthrough Therapy by FDA - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/science/psilocybin-major-depression-mdd-usona-breakthrough-therapy-fda/ <comment><USER2> I've been reading a book called "How to Change Your Mind"[1] which contains a collection of history, anecdotes, trip reports, and some of the science behind these types of drugs. The book mostly discusses psilocybin and LSD, but it also touches on some of the other related drugs. If you're curious and want to learn more, it's worth a read.

The one thing I'll say is that it seems like these drugs affect the brain in a way that's more akin to a super-placebo, rather than being therapeutic on their own. In other words, you would need to use the drugs in combination with therapy to obtain good results.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Change_Your_Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Change_Your_Mind)

<comment><USER3> Super placebo is a scientifically incorrect description. These drugs suppress activity of the default mode network of the brain, which is a sort of "conductor" of the brain, which chooses which "instruments" to prioritize and how to allocate the train of thought. All of the different parts of your mind are able to sing out more creatively and independently, forging new paths that they are not accustomed to taking -- this is why it's great for mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, alcoholism, smoking -- it allows your mind an incredible flexibility.

In my personal experiences with psychedelics, these drugs remove mental heuristics, allowing the mind to think unimpeded by usual thought patterns, simply accepting raw data as it comes in. This was striking in sensory information, if you closed your eyes or just stared at something long enough, you observed incredibly different visual input, geometric patterns, greatly strengthened colors (a strawberry was INCREDIBLY beautiful, I almost felt bad eating such a beautiful entity). There was also an incredible inter- disciplinary thought process, I felt the musical, mathematical, computational, logical, natural, all these parts of my mind mixed together wonderfully.

LSD was much longer lasting, around 12 hours, whereas psilocybin was around 6 hours. Psilocybin enhanced my connection with nature, the flying bugs, a handful of berries, and the plants all around me caused an effusion of love and connection. Whereas with LSD, I felt an extremely powerful visual stimulation, the changing fall leaves were extremely vibrant and beautiful, it was akin to 12 hour, mentally-clear cannabis high. I didn't experience any "flashbacks" per se, there was a positive glow in my mood and thoughts for around 5 days, and the day after LSD I still had lingering effects...I also wonder if I will evermore look at the surface of ponds and lakes differently, they have an incredible dynamism and vitality that I appreciated even more on first trip.

For anyone considering psychedelics, do it thoughtfully and methodically. Read the book mentioned in the parent, practice meditation, explore your mind, and really ensure your mindset ("set") is positive and open. Further, plan to occupy a peaceful, quiet place, hopefully lacking too many strangers/social interaction ("setting"). If set and setting are good, you're in for a wonderful time.

<comment><USER4> Is there a way to induce this feeling without the aid of psychedelics or breathwork?

<comment><USER5> Meditation is said to be able to give similar experiences. But of course require a lot more work.

<comment><USER6> Some years ago I wanted to give it a shot so I tried one of those meditation exercises, where the goal is to have your mind calm to the point of not having any conscious thoughts and only experiencing sensations. Was stubborn about it and did it for maybe 3? hours continuously until I actually started having some success.

I can definitely report reaching an altered-state experience afterward that mirrors some of the things described here. The intensity of everything was dialed way, way up, in a way I had kind of forgotten was possible but I'm pretty sure I experienced as a kid. I don't think there's a way to put it in words that's comparable to experiencing it but it was not a subtle effect at all.

Abstractly, say everything has an "interestingness" value, and certain things would be near the top like a great movie or book. It was like there was a dial for this value that just scaled everything, and it was dialed up high enough where just the way light & shadow interacted on some things was as interesting as a great movie. Everything was super interesting. Kind of like a reverse burnout state, where maybe nothing is interesting. The effect lasted the rest of the day.

Anyway it wasn't easy at all to get in that state and I don't think I made a serious effort again. But I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot to anyone who's curious. It wasn't like there was any complex technique, it was basically just close your eyes, focus attention on breath and let go of all conscious thoughts. Personally the last part was the hard part.

I wonder if it gets easier with time so you can reach that state in 30 min or something instead of struggling hard for 3 hours. If that's the case maybe I should try seriously practicing it since having control of that dial would be pretty useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While this is a great step forward, it's still going to take years for this to be even remotely accessible. I've been in therapy and taking various medications for years and haven't found anything that really works, at least for more than a brief period.

Don't forget esketamine was also granted breakthrough treatment status recently, but I have yet to find a doctor willing to try it because it's "so new". On top of that, it's still outrageously expensive even with insurance, if insurance will even cover it at all because it's "so new" and I haven't yet exhausted every compound that's ever existed. Sigh.

<comment><USER8> Not to be facetious but why is the legal status of these drugs preventing you from trying them?

Ketamine, LSD, shrooms are all accessible, and recreational varieties are not expensive.

<comment><USER9> This is a ridiculous question, the answer is because they are illegal, of course.

Most of us aren't willing to risk a criminal record.

I wouldn't know where I could obtain such items even if I wanted to buy them. If I can't buy something off the shelf at a retail store I'm simply not going to bother.

Sketchy/unknown supply chain.

Tons of us have jobs (or whole careers!) that we could lose for using illegal drugs, many of those jobs include random drug tests. I'm not risking my entire fucking livelihood without a damn good reason.

<comment><USER8> Hardly ridiculous. Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level but might as well be considered legal at this point.

No one is going to go to jail because you purchased a small amount of drugs. If you are the seller it's a different story.

<comment><USER7> I've been to jail for a small amount of MJ. The chain of custody and the purity/contamination of a plant is much easier to track, then something like a powder a pill or liquid. There is literally no circumstance where I would trust something that wasn't a plant on the black market

<comment><USER10> Ehrlich's reagent will tell you if you have something in at least the same chemical family as LSD, which rules out almost all of the dangerous substances that are sometimes sold as "LSD."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Set and setting.

I believe it's important to realize that the "magic" is not in the mushroom.

> "Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It > merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system > of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience > depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of > the individual, including his personality structure and his mood at the > time. Setting is physical — the weather, the room's atmosphere; social — > feelings of persons present towards one another; and cultural — prevailing > views as to what is real. It is for this reason that manuals or guide-books > are necessary. Their purpose is to enable a person to understand the new > realities of the expanded consciousness, to serve as road maps for new > interior territories which modern science has made accessible."

~ Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

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

Drugs like LSD and psilocybin are the chemical equivalent of banging on the side of the box to make the TV work.

With proper _set and setting_ you can get profound effects from e.g. a sweat lodge, or even just hyperventilation (I'm referring to Leonard Orr's Rebirthing breathwork. I would normally link to the wikipedia article on it but that's been defaced by capital-S Skeptics and reduced to a note crapping on the whole thing as "discredited". My dad actually worked for Leonard Orr for a bit and what he was doing was pretty profound whatever it was.)

On the one hand, it's great that the vindictive hysteria around psychedelic drugs is calming down, on the other hand I wish the scientific establishment had a little more epistemological sophistication when it came to investigating the inner world.

To sum up, the cure is not in the pill, it's in the set and setting. The pill just gives you an excuse. You can also use e.g. hypnosis, prayer, drumming, dancing, sweat lodges, or weird breathing, to effect the change you want, just to name a small sampling of the available modalities.

<comment><USER12> It's amazing how strongly people can have an opinion about something they have clue what they're talking about.

[https://www.pnas.org/content/113/17/4853](https://www.pnas.org/content/113/17/4853)

Synopsis: no, actually the drug has a pretty powerful impact on your brain and is the main driver of the effect

<comment><USER11> First, thank you! That paper is awesome, actual Scottish science. Cheers!

Second, I would never begin to deny that "the drug has a pretty powerful impact on your brain", because that would be stupid.

Third which "effect"? Your linked study "sought to investigate the acute brain effects of LSD in healthy volunteers", we're discussing psilocybin for major depression. So... what's up doc?

What I'm saying is that getting high is not the best available therapy for depression.

<comment><USER12> First of all, whether "getting high", as you put it, is or is not the best "available" therapy for depression is debatable, and not known at this time. Ketamine has definitely shown to be much more effective against certain kinds of depression than therapy, and much quicker acting, and I wouldn't doubt that psilocybin might also be.

But more to the point, you were asserting that the effects of the drugs were secondary to the therapy associated with them, to which I strongly disagree with. The action of the drug itself is main driver of its therapeutic potential, specifically that of "breaking" normal heuristic patterns of activity, suppressing others, and allowing more inter-region connections and plasticity to flourish where non existed before. Most people can't do that very easily, if at all , with just therapy, meditation, diet, and exercise or whatever. However, I -CAN- do that, quite easily and without effort, without the guidance of a therapist or anything else, by simply eating some mushrooms and letting them do their thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's the actual trial [https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03866174](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03866174)

</comment><comment><USER14> Peter Thiel is behind this, which is both good and bad. [https://qz.com/1454785/a-millionaire-couple-is- threatening-t...](https://qz.com/1454785/a-millionaire-couple-is-threatening- to-create-a-magic-mushroom-monopoly/)

<comment><USER15> I think it is good, he is a libertarian and providing freedom of choice is an ideal he would try to push for.

<comment><USER16> Not according to that article. Sounds like he is using a charity to backdoor fund his own private investments in to the research.

> "From generations of practitioners and researchers before us, we have > received knowledge about these substances, their risks, and ways to use them > constructively," reads the statement. "In turn, we accept the call to use > that knowledge for the common good and to share freely whatever related > knowledge we may discover or develop."

> It has been signed by 104 individual scientists, scholars, and > practitioners, 21 research and service organizations, including MAPS, > Heffter, Usona, and 12 psychedelic societies and integration circles. > Compass has not signed.

Given Thiel's track record I think it's not very likely he is doing this for a "freedom of choice" but more as "Opportunity to get richer".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As someone who has treatment-resistant major depression and who uses comedy as a survival mechanism, and is greatly looking forward to being able to try this treatment out, I hope you'll permit me to share this humorous thought I had after reading this article:

"Ask your doctor if tripping your nuts off is right for you."

<comment><USER18> I'd say that's a pretty good joke. In fact, I had trouble keeping it together reading this in public.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for sharing that, mate. Causing someone to involuntarily laugh in public is one of my favorite things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > The Usona Phase 2 trial plans to enrol 80 subjects, randomized to receive > either a single active dose of psilocybin or an active placebo containing > niacin.

Blind testing in this case seems silly. It'll be obvious to both patient and doctor pretty quickly who got the high dose psychedelic and who got placebo

<comment><USER20> Always good to make sure, especially in psychology where placebo effects can be really really strong, especially if you're talking about microdosing psiliocybin. There's no reason not to be scientifically thorough and make sure you have a good control group to compare against

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what doses they're using.

During my 20s-30s, I tripped with about 0.5 mg LSD more or less once month. It at least kept bipolar depression at bay.

But now I use lamotrigine/modafinil. Which is less fun, but also more effective and less disruptive.

<comment><USER22> What's your experience with Lamotrigine? Don't know if this is the right place to ask, but I take that for anti-seizure and I'm wondering if that affects my thoughts and feelings in a different way because it's used for a case like your mentioned bipolar depression.

<comment><USER23> I have taken gabapentin (which is similar) but for visual snow. While I'm not diagnosed as bipolar, I have noticed that gabapentin does level out your emotions some. I've considered trying lamotrigine but have been scared of the allergic reactions it can cause. Gabapentin may work as an alternative.

<comment><USER22> I didn't have that side effect on Lamotrigine. That was my 4th drug for no seizures. I'm on 300mg/day with it. Was at 400mg, but if I take too much I get hit with something I'd call total body dull pain where I can't do much other than sit there in a ball and wait for my body to get rid of enough of it. Based on the other comments, that's a lot more than for bipolar doses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A great intro into the history and current status of psychedelics is How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan [0].

> It chronicles the long and storied history of psychedelic drugs, from their > turbulent 1960s heyday to the resulting countermovement and backlash. > Through his coverage of the recent resurgence in this field of research, as > well as his own personal use of psychedelics via a "mental travelogue", > Pollan seeks to illuminate not only the mechanics of the drugs themselves, > but also the inner workings of the human mind and consciousness.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Change_Your_Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Change_Your_Mind)

<comment><USER25> Pollan was on the JRE (edit: Joe Rogan Experience podcast) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz4CrWE_P0g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz4CrWE_P0g)

<comment><USER26> You should probably spell out that acronym here.

<comment><USER25> Done thx

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How do you even control for a placebo in a trial like this? I gotta imagine you're either going to know you're on mushrooms or you're not.

<comment><USER28> You don't - you compare it to "standard of care" (antidepressants, CBT, etc.).

If we can compare an inferior treatment to placebo, and we can compare a breakthrough treatment to this established standard, we can evaluate the new treatment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love how all these "terrible illegal drugs" turn out to be helping people in so many different ways.

Remind me again, which illnesses alcohol cures?

<comment><USER30> Methanol poisoning, but that's it

<comment><USER31> Also ethylene glycol poisoning (antifreeze).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> With all the beautiful anecdotes on this page, HN is going to be driving a lot of dark market traffic today.

</comment><comment><USER33> Another new and novel treatment for MDD is called rTMS or repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Its effects are probably more durable than Magic Mushrooms from the literature, up to a year or more in some cases from a single round of treatment. A quick search in pubmed will bring 1000s of articles on its efficacy.

Any loss for big pharma is a big win for consumers.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if this would be useful for folks dealing with cancer and other illnesses that leave your future uncertain.

<comment><USER34> It has been proven to significantly reduce depression and anxiety in cancer patients [1]. This has been one of the most famous studies on psychedelics in recent years. However, set (patient's mindset, intentions, psychological preparation) and setting (environment, support of the sitter) have huge impact on the outcome. That's because psychedelics are not a switch that change your brain chemistry forever, they are a tool that allow you to enter, understand and reshuffle your mind.

[1] [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881116675513](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881116675513)

<comment><USER35> It should be standard to offer this and marijuana in hospice. It can bring peace to those who are ill and their loved ones.

<comment><USER36> Psychedelics shouldn't be viewed as palliative. They help you to bring about changes to your self. For some people trips can be very frightening or even traumatizing.

<comment><USER35> One of my family members was dying and extremely anxious in hospice. The person reflected on their life and wanted to make amends with some people.

I believe something like a psychedelic would've provided clarity. It could've been traumatizing, but it could've worked too. Patients should have a choice to accept the risk.

<comment><USER25> That's the rub, right? They are already enduring insurmountable stress and anxiety, a brand new horror story viscerally unfolding in their mind is an extreme downside.

<comment><USER35> Hardly. Nothing left to lose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This and other developments make me very hopeful for the future of mental health. Lots of hard work ahead, but it seems like a corner has finally been turned.

<comment><USER33> Check out rTMS (repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation). Brain stimulation has come a long way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> People who are a bit afraid of the drugs should try floatation tank together with lucia light therapy. It's the best spiritually rejuvenating experience I have had in my life and I've done them all. Floating tanks come with proper set and setting so you don't have to worry about your safety.

All plants are medicinal. The thing is if you use them like processed sugar you are fucked just like junk food that kills.

</comment><comment><USER39> I am reminding myself to be a little critical of this future domain of psychadelics used as mood stabilizers for the masses.

While human history is rich with tales of alchemy and mind altering substances, the usage was often ritualised and functioning in a "sacred" or communal context.

I personally experimented with some of these substances, and i intuitively see them as a potential great leap forward compared to the potential horror of opiates, benzodiazepines or life long SSRI use - but i also feel a vague dark undercurrent running through this newfound mainstream appreciation of psychedelics just as Mindfulness has become a utility or a tool removed from its context or even it's original meaning whatever that may be.

My own struggle with living a healthy life in 21. century "technocapitalist society" or whatever has led me to believe that most depression is not "just a chemical imbalance", "a lack of appreciation or gratitude" or a "lazy mindset" \- instead depression is _often not always_ closer to an evolutionary mechanism telling you that "something is wrong" and you need to take radical steps to remove yourself from X situation whether it be social, about lifestyle or about geographic location - the opposite can also be true, that you need to be accepted by a tribe, reach out for guidance or establish new relationships.

Modern humans are in general pretty lonely, skin hungry, lack communal connection, touch, intimacy, a good proper diet, connection with nature, meaning/spirituality in a social context, have bad posture, are stressed out, have horrible sleep patterns etc. compared to our evolutionary blueprint or just compared to the societies of a few decades ago - without romanticising too much.

In other words; it's not weird that people are depressed in this day and age spending so much time inside, not being close to friends / family, not moving about enough . And i am not convinced that mainstream palliative care is sufficient or even the right approach the problem. It's about restructuring local community, our cities and our daily lives.

Anyway i currently se this as being very promising, and a am still endlessly fascinated by the philosophy and science of consciousness, meditative praxis and psychedelics, so i am not against that aspect but critical of the utilitarian mindset behind this type of use.

EDIT: I can see that i receive quite a lot of downvotes. Can anyone elaborate?

<comment><USER3> How is it not a "natural" way of life to imbibe natural compounds from plants and fungi that have been imbibed for tens of thousands of years? THC, CBD, and psilocybin, as well as many other compounds like coffee, tea, chocolate, caffeine, etc. have been part of human diets for countless generations. There are even biological theories that state that these plants and humans co- evolved, with humans spreading around the plants intentionally and unintentionally, and selecting those plants with "positive" effects and thus co-evolution occurred.

<comment><USER40> I don't think that kossTKR said anything about the ingestion of these substances being unnatural; rather, their implication is that psychedelics are poised as a solution to the depressive symptoms that we feel by nature of living in the societies that we do.

In other words: instead of fixing some of the symptoms caused by society, why not change society and the ways that we live?

There are strong parallels in western notions of mindfulness. In our society mindfulness/meditation are considered tools that helps us mitigate stress. The original intent was to stop the sources of stress and suffering by developing one's mind, but western interpretations fall far shorter of that, opting for a grotesquely simplified and amputated version of the original philosophy that aids in placating the masses rather than bringing about fundamental changes to the ways we live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I took psilocybin once, over a decade ago. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was suffering from mild depression. After the "trip", my mild depression was lifted for at least the following 5 years. Pretty potent stuff.

<comment><USER42> Psilocybin doesn't stay in your body for years. The impact to you was likely due to the experience _while tripping_ on psilocybin.

<comment><USER41> Oh, I know. I just mean it's pretty impressive one dose of anything could have such long lasting curative effects on something as intractable as depression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I can't wait to see the faces of war on drug proponents when clinical practice will prove psylocibin has no adverse effects and no addiction potential.

<comment><USER44> Are you assuming proponents of the war on drugs would be rationally motivated by facts?

<comment><USER43> As far as I know it's already a scientific fact but this time it is going to become "official". You can deny what has been figured out in a laboratory on a humble group of people (let alone mice) but you have little choice but to shut up once thousands of people all over the country get cured this way without going nuts or "becoming prostitutes" ©.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Imteresting. . And immediately relevant to considering production... [https://qz.com/1235963/scientists-who-want-to-study- psychede...](https://qz.com/1235963/scientists-who-want-to-study-psychedelic- mushrooms-have-to-pay-7000-per-gram/)

</comment><comment><USER46> Unrelated: I just saw Fantastic Fungi[1], a Louie Schwartzberg film, which discusses Psilocybin in depth. It is one of the most visually entertaining movies I've ever seen. Highly recommend!

[1] [https://fantasticfungi.com/](https://fantasticfungi.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know a 25 mg oral dose of pure psilocybin compares to typical grams of dried mushrooms people eat ?

<comment><USER47> From Wikipedia: "The concentration of active psilocybin mushroom compounds varies not only from species to species, but also from mushroom to mushroom inside a given species, subspecies or variety. The same holds true even for different parts of the same mushroom. In the species Psilocybe samuiensis, the dried cap of the mushroom contains the most psilocybin at about 0.23%–0.90%. The mycelium contains about 0.24%–0.32%."

So for 3.5g ≈ [8.05mg ; 31.5mg] And for 2.5g ≈ [5.75mg ; 22.5mg]

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Seems no one has mentioned it, but I wonder how easy it would be to prescribe this as a solution to those with mental illness. For example, when I smoked weed for the first and only time I had the worst panic attack of my life that made it 5 hours of hell, so I promised myself I'd never do it again. I didn't suffer from mental illness previously, except for some basic anxiety, but these drugs can trigger major panic attacks and even psychosis. The risk of triggering an episode goes up the more severe your illness; ie. I remember reading that someone who previously suffered panic disorder has a 500% higher chance than the average person of a panic attack when smoking weed and if you are depressed or schizophrenic the numbers get worse.

Combine that with the fact that guys like Joe rogan tell those with mental illness not to try hallucinogens, and it makes me wonder how will these solutions affect the brain chemistry of the mentally ill in the long run? What are the potential side effects and how does a pre-existing condition outside of depression change your risk factors?

</comment><comment><USER49> I saw a stately "Family Practice" last week, that had been around for a few years, but now had a big new street sign to the effect of "get your marijuana here!" out front. I don't believe that I have ever seen that sort of thing for other prescription drugs.

<comment><USER50> Except for the myriad of prescription drugs advertised on television, radio, websites, in magazines... do I need to go on?

<comment><USER49> I've just never seen a street sign for one before. But you buttress my point. A certain number of doctors are normal human beings after all, and are perfectly willing to push pills if it makes them money. Entertainment/luxury drugs are at the highest risk for this sort of behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Erowid store massive amounts of information about drugs, including user stories. It's a great resource for beginning research, and has a section for psilocybin mushrooms.

[https://www.erowid.org/](https://www.erowid.org/)

</comment><comment><USER52> FYI the single dose trials that lead to this were discussed here before as well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3055731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3055731)

</comment><comment><USER53> Wow, that's awesome. Nature can heal, about time they recognize that.

</comment><comment><USER54> [https://overcast.fm/+KebsDhWec](https://overcast.fm/+KebsDhWec)

Great Tim Ferris podcast with Michael Pollan that goes into the details on this subject.

<comment><USER55> I think Tim Ferris has been helping fund some of the research... [https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-ferriss-first- psychedeli...](https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-ferriss-first-psychedelic- research-center-launches-imperial-london-2019-4?r=US&IR=T)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Seems entirely reasonable, at least for depression linked to overwhelming emotional events, that a positive overwhelming emotional event would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER57> Everyone prosecuted by the government for using this deserves compensation. In fact, why do we give government such authority over us in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER58> Note that Ketamine is already available and it has had impressive results for depression based both on studies and on personal accounts.

</comment><comment><USER59> I can't help but wonder if instead of confronting the source of our depression, we're simply drugging ourselves to the point we can't feel it anymore--especially that people are now looking to psilocybin as a means of treating depression. Perhaps the depression is a symptom of something bigger, a lack of purpose or meaning in life.

Someone I know was on medication for anxiety, and they remarked how they'd go to see a movie at the theater, and would simply have no emotional reaction to it. A character sacrificing their life for a friend would have the same reaction as tomatoes being sliced for a hamburger.

The medication had an INCREDIBLE affect on them, and it really helped them out of a bad place. But the huge thing is they learned to identify the source of their anxiety and confront it, and no longer depend on the medication.

I just make circuits. Don't take this as medical advice.

<comment><USER60> With all respect to you as someone who is likely commenting in good faith, you clearly have _no idea_ what you're talking about. I have mental health problems that are all but solved by the medication I take, and I also have extensive experience with hallucinogens. Without the medication, I am as you describe: anhedonic, with a flat affect and little patience for, well, life. Hallucinogens also have exactly zero dulling effect, and the "glow" aftereffect from them is not a numbing, either. On the contrary, it's a deep and abiding understanding of place in the universe and sense of self. YMMV, obviously.

<comment><USER4> How long do you feel like this before you feel you have to hallucinate again?

<comment><USER37> It's not about hallucinating. The important thing is that it provides a powerful soft reset on highly-habituated thought patterns, reactions, and perspectives.

People who experience depression and anxiety often times have ingrained negative or counter-productive thought patterns and micro reactions that are very difficult to overcome. Sometimes even noticing these patterns is quite tricky.

It makes a ton of sense to me that psilocybin, especially with the guidance of skilled therapists, can have this kind of incredible impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> After several years of casual reading online and reading "How to Change Your Mind", I decided to experiment with psilocybin.

What I did was borderline reckless. The substance is illegal. Using it outside the context of carefully designed interventions has no evidence of improving the well-being over the long run. Despite these clear detractors, I feel sharing my experience may help others in their search for happiness.

My main concern was how to know if I was given the real thing or the right dose. I decided to go with dried, whole mushrooms and grind them up at home. For a month, I took around 150-250g every 3 days and took notes throughout the day. This helped me record how I was feeling (even on 'off' days) to assess how it was affecting how I felt. This could be considered microdosing, but not quite as somedays I noticed a difference: I was more aware of my emotions and what happened throughout my day. Intense anger, sadness, joy, beauty, the whole thing. I noticed details details I had never noticed in my daily commute.

This could have been due to the journaling. My main objective was to see how the substance affected me. After concluding the trial a friend asked me 'so, are you happier now?'. That was not the point. My takeaway was that the exercise made me more aware of my feelings - something I realized would be useful if I wanted to get to know myself better. After this, I was still scared to do a 'full dose' and left it at that.

After around 6 months, I decided to try it out. Felt I needed supervision but my close ones thought I was crazy for wanting to do this. Stupidly, I did something riskier and went on trying to find a 'healer' online. Luckily I found a nice lady (she had yelp reviews and all) who took care of me while I took 2g of dried shrooms. She didn't seem to do anything special, just make sure I had a nice/safe space to lie down while high. Again, the dosing was gradual: first 1g (4-5x what I had during the microdosing trial) then an extra one after a few hours.

It felt like I had meditated for years. My deepest hour-long meditation does not come even close. Everything was peaceful. I felt all sorts of emotions, as if a color wheel and tried them out one by one and switched between them: deep sorrow, bliss, intense anger and many more as well as quick transitions and mixes I can't explain.

My life changed after this. I am a more conscientious coworker and husband. I am present. I am there for my loved ones. I love myself and stopped shaming myself for not working. I understood that the point of my life is just living it: no further instructions or expectations. This is something I needed to internalize and the session helped me.

After a few months I felt I had yet to discover more. Based on what I had read online, I knew the substance had the ability to make me feel other important things. I realized the lady just made me feel safe and I had already seen what 150mg-2g did to me, so I decided to do more on my own.

I locked myself up in my apartment, gave my best friend the key and told him to drop by just in case to check up on me. I worked my way up 1g at a time to 7.5g. I felt what many mention online. A quick way to summarize it is 'we'. I felt what it feels to not be myself. My big conclusion was that the only thing I could do was be grateful. I have taken to this feeling daily after that session.

To be clear: I already had a daily meditation practice and a habit of journaling my gratitudes before the trips. The conclusions under the substance may have just been things I had already been exposed and intensely prioritized in my life. But there's something about these experiences that made me feel more intensly and helped me internalize them - I 'felt' the conclusions, not just 'think' about them.

I am scared of the consequences of suggesting others to try this out. The feelings I experienced, the results I have seen in my personal life and the literature we have about this substance make me conclude that the risk is worth taking. Basic precautions can help mitigate the downside: small/trial doses, safe environment and some reading about the substance worked for me.

When I read what is happening with these trials, I can't help but hope we find a way to give this to everyone. I do not claim that what I did is safe or even desirable at scale. There's a chance if 100 people do what I did, some may accelerate or trigger some form of mental illness or harm themselves (I did think 'what if he kills himself?' (thinking about myself) and figured none of my loved ones would want to try shrooms if I did).

A world with more people who can feel 'we' is filled with love and compassion. I believe psilocybin can help us.

</comment><comment><USER62> The worst part about the psychedelic renaissance is the comment section.

<comment><USER63> Nailed it. It surprises me how few in this crowd has had first-hand experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> tl;dr

The FDA will review on priority if the clinical trial (details here -> [https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03866174](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03866174)) succeeds.

For people outside of the US (like me) who don't know what "Breakthrough Therapy" is : "Breakthrough therapy is a United States Food and Drug Administration designation that expedites drug development that was created by Congress under Section 902 of the 9 July 2012 Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act. he FDA's "breakthrough therapy" designation is not intended to imply that a drug is actually a "breakthrough" or that there is high-quality evidence of treatment efficacy for a particular condition; rather, it allows the FDA to grant priority review to drug candidates if preliminary clinical trials indicate that the therapy may offer substantial treatment advantages over existing options for patients with serious or life- threatening diseases" [1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_therapy)

</comment><comment><USER65> Disappointing graphic

</comment><comment><USER66> very informative post i liked thanks for sharing post

</comment><comment><USER67> I often wonder if Depression really is a "disorder" that you either have or don't have. And that can be "cured".

Unlike having a broken leg or having the flu, depression seems to be something everybody has to a certain degree.

Is there any research on this available?

<comment><USER68> Depression has plenty of evidence linking it to inflammation. If we can start seeing it not in terms of mind/body dualism, or on some outmoded moral spectrum, but on the same terms as any other illness, like the common cold, we'll make a lot of progress with it as a society. Much like the common cold, it probably has many different causes (like colds are causes by many viruses) but the same disease phenotype.

What you might be getting at with the comment that "everyone has it" is that modern society seems to cause depression just as surely as swimming in sewage will cause other illnesses. Much like society prior to germ theory, widespread depression will continue until we can learn more about the causes and mechanisms. People used to think other illnesses were moral failing or spiritual possession until we discovered that it was from drinking water that someone else crapped in. So how many things are crapping on your mental health? Are they really inevitable and necessary, or just bad cultural programming and assumptions about what society should look like? How much might be from strictly physical causes like air pollution? (There's research backing that.)

<comment><USER67>
        Depression has plenty of evidence
        linking it to inflammation

That would be interesting. What makes you think so? Any studies you can link to?

<comment><USER68> Here's a few for depression and air pollution[1][2] Here's some studies on anti-inflammatory treatments for treatment resistant depression[3] And more relevant to the original topic, 5HT-2A receptor agonists may have anti- inflammatory effects. There's huge potential in a broad class of molecules that have been banned for moral, not medicinal, reasons.[4] Edit: picked another one [5]

1\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30719959](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30719959)

2\. [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/brain-pollution- evid...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/brain-pollution-evidence- builds-dirty-air-causes-alzheimer-s-dementia)

3.[https://www.healio.com/psychiatry/depression/news/online/%7B...](https://www.healio.com/psychiatry/depression/news/online/%7B892f625f-13e6-4a1d-92e5-250ad1be05a2%7D/clinicians- guide-to-anti-inflammatory-treatments-for-major-depression)

4.[https://www.fasebj.org/doi/abs/10.1096/fasebj.2019.33.1_supp...](https://www.fasebj.org/doi/abs/10.1096/fasebj.2019.33.1_supplement.503.12)

5.[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3788795/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3788795/)

That's just some quick googling. There's tons more out there to read!

<comment><USER67> Sorry, but none of these are studies about the relationship between depression and inflammation treatment.

Such a study would have to provide a measurement of the severity of the depression. Then split the patients in two groups. Give one group a placebo and the other one the inflammation treatment. And then compare the depression severity in those groups after the treatment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Atlast

</comment><comment><USER70> Using pills to solve a moral problem is as ineffective and illogical as using food to solve sadness.

<comment><USER71> You think having depression is a moral failure? Do you know, or perhaps even love, someone with clinical depression? I do; we've been married more then 20 years, so I see it up close every day. It isn't a problem of morals or character.

To see her suffering and struggle daily and to have some internet expert claim she has a moral deficit is more than a little aggravating.

Something has gone wrong in the control loops that keep her a healthy balance point. The brain/body connection is real, not some new age woo.

<comment><USER70> Having depression is not a moral failure. But often it is caused by a lack of knowing how to handle moral dilemmas properly.

The brain is just a conduit for the soul and this connection is called the mind.

<comment><USER71> > The brain is just a conduit for the soul

OK, you are arguing a religious belief, and are ignoring the measurable biochemical anomalies in my wife's physical body. Please list some of these moral dilemmas that my wife is unable to handle that caused this condition, and why I should discount the decades of chronic pain caused by a genetic problem (EDS), the wrestling match with cancer, the familial disposition towards depression, the debilitating effects of living in a house affected by black mold, etc.

<comment><USER70> Cause and effect goes much deeper than atoms.

<comment><USER71> I look forward to your Nobel Prize establishing this.

<comment><USER70> It's not that it's unproved, it's that people aren't interested in hearing the proof, because it would mean they would have to change. If you are interested in explanations, watch a couple of Fulton Sheen episodes linked to from [https://sdegutis.github.io](https://sdegutis.github.io) especially within the Family Retreat series or the Catechism series.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientist Discovers Formula to Make Viral YouTube Movies - <AUTHOR> http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/15/4055410/scientist-discovers-formula-to.html <comment><USER2> There's no information here about whether the algorithm has successfully identified videos that will go viral before they actually do.

I have a very simple algorithm with one criterion. Look at the number under the youtube video. If it is very large, it went viral.

I (cynically) can't help but wonder whether the researchers have discovered a formula for making lots of money from advertising firms. I notice almost no details are given of the algorithm.</comment>


Lua 5.4.0 (alpha-rc1) now available - <AUTHOR> http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2019-05/msg00348.html <comment><AUTHOR> The biggest new feature appears to be local variable attributes. You can now annotate variables with `const` or `toclose`. The former prevents reassignment, and the latter runs a metamethod upon the local going out of scope. There's other new stuff in there like a generational GC, a runtime warning system, and the ability to store Lua values with a userdata, but I think these were in prior 5.4 work versions.

Here's a more detailed list, for the curious:

\- Changes since Lua 5.3: [https://www.lua.org/work/doc/#changes](https://www.lua.org/work/doc/#changes)

\- Incompatibilities with the Previous Version: [https://www.lua.org/work/doc/manual.html#8](https://www.lua.org/work/doc/manual.html#8)

<comment><USER2> > ability to store Lua values with a userdata

Ability to store _multiple_ values (uservalues) with a userdata. Since Lua 5.2 one has always been able to store a single uservalue, which could be a table storing as many items as you wanted. Lua 5.1 had the concept of environments, which had the same role as uservalues for userdata types.

Being able to store multiple uservalues with a userdata type is quite convenient and cuts down on garbage objects (i.e. table container). Also mirrors the ability to set multiple upvalues for functions.

These are the kinds of features that really make Lua shine in terms of embedding and extension. Lua has rich interfaces for efficiently and conveniently associating native (e.g. C) objects with Lua objects and vice- versa. Other languages are rife with hacks as they only provide the simplest such mechanisms, if at all.

By contrast, the new warning API seems dubious. It's a great idea conceptually but logging is the sort of interface that generates a ton of friction in terms of composability and integration. It's _impossible_ to please even a substantial minority of people. That said, I already have ideas for how to use it.

<comment><USER3> Can you share any of your potential used for warn()? I think I'm not really understanding it? Why is is better or different than print() or protected calls?

<comment><USER2> My latest project is a PC/SC and PKCS#11 driver framework. There are a few places in the C code, particularly the driver entry points before calling into Lua, where you can't bubble up an error context--you're limited to returning an error code to the caller--but for debugging and diagnostics you really want some context. Currently I just fprintf to stderr because it's not worth the hassle to call the logging code written for the Lua part of the drivers, but this new warning infrastructure provides a clear path for doing this--just replace the calls to fprintf with lua_warning (or a wrapper for vararg formatting).

It would be trivial to have done this myself, but it's one of those things you abstain from doing because you don't want the burden of making the choices (e.g. how to manage the global singleton hook), maintaining the code, and perpetually resisting the urge to refactor it.

My guess is that the warn global in the Lua environment was primarily added for symmetry with lua_warning. It's notable that there's no counterpart (AFAICT) to lua_setwarnf provided for Lua code. I think the warning API is principally a feature for C code.

I still think it's a dubious addition and will end up generating friction. It's the kind of thing people love to hate. For example, I bet it won't be long before someone complains you can only pass a single string rather than an object like with lua_error or multiple value like with lua_call/lua_yield. I won't complain about it, though. =)

EDIT: Reading the mailing-list and the code (grep for luaE_warning), it looks like this interface was principally added for the GC so __gc metamethod errors could be reported without throwing exceptions at random places in the code (i.e. where ever the application happened to be when the GC finalized an object).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Red Hat jumps, IBM shares dip on cloud mega-merger - <AUTHOR> https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/red-hat-jumps--ibm-shares-dip-on-cloud-mega-merger-10876570 <comment><USER2> This is generally how mergers work, yes.</comment>


Compression Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://tiamat.tsotech.com/compression-sucks

<comment><USER2> > _We tolerate it today because we've grown accustomed to it and we accept > low-bandwidth distribution channels such as today's "broadband" Internet > connectivity._

Many people do not accept this unless "accept" means "have no power to do anything but use the lines provided to them by companies; while complaining and campaigning for more bandwidth to be delivered".

> _Connectivity is considered by many as "good enough" because you can shove a > lossy-compressed 1080 video down without worry over a connection measured in > the paltry few megabits per second._

When I'm watching movies or TV I almost never care about the resolution. I wish the plots were not so obvious or the characters were not so cardboard- cutout or with silly motivations or that the film was a bit morally braver. I might wonder why a lighting decision was made, or I might wonder whether it'd be better without that music. But I hardly ever think "This movie would be a better movie if it looked better".

See, for example, Clerks. That's a lo-fi movie which is significantly enhanced by being lo-fi. All the slightly wonky acting is excused because the movie reminds us that it was shot on a personal credit-card budget.

See also the discussion about "The Hobbit" with some people saying the double framerate has made some things "too realistic", thus de-immersing them from the experience.

> _Even the most avid technophiles (broadbandophiles?) among us chuckle to > ourselves when we upgrade our connection from 25Mbps to 35Mbps. We know it's > in large part for ego, so we can post screen caps of bandwidth meters._

Well, this is a good point. Consumers appear to buy big (or small) numbers. "Megapixels? MORE IS BETTER!!" even though it's not true. Thus, we've ended up with a "Bandwidth? Bigger number is better! Price? Lower is better!" even though that says nothing about contention or reliability or fair-use allowances. We end up with odd situations where a user buys an "unlimited" account, manages to get full speed for 8 minutes, and then has their connection throttled for the rest of the month because they've gone over their fair use allowance. That's a rant worth having.

I'd be interested to see if there are any competitions for "compression of video" - these could go alongside the Hutter Prize.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kind of a useless rant, IMO.

Even Bluray movies are lossy compressed, so you can't paint with a brush so large that it encompasses all "lossy compression". Be more specific.

Lossless compression is not a realistic option for video over networks given current technology. Not today, not 5 years from now, probably not 10 years from now, especially if we keep bumping the resolution of video streams up (eg from 1080p to 4K formats, etc).

</comment><comment><USER4> _Please_ fix your website so there aren't things moving in the background while I try to read what appeared to be some well-written text. I lasted about 5 seconds, and it's a shame.

</comment><comment><USER5> You're just fooling yourself if you believe that a photograph that is not lossily compressed would be sharp in every single detail. That's not how lenses (or our eyes) work.

</comment><comment><USER6> A raw 1080p movie at 24fps would require a 1.5 Gb/s connection, and I am pretty sure there aren't any lossless video codecs out there.

Low-bitrate HD content sucks.

<comment><USER7> Not nessarilly. The majority of possible videos are highly improbable, so from an information theory standpoint, it should be possible to have lossless video compression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Off-topic but I found this website unusable on Firefox/Mac. :)

<comment><USER9> Worked on Firefox/Windows but I had to enable scripts and then enable cookies and then got stuck with a stupidly annoying animating background that totally distracted from whatever the author was trying to say. I got about a half- sentence in and then said to myself "F this, I've got better things to be doing than screwing with my eyesight at one-thirty in the morning."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> wow this website can be used as a CPU stress test.</comment>


Apache Atlas 1.0.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-announce/201806.mbox/%3C05E989B0-4F8E-4BCE-88B0-2CC06DE2241F%40apache.org%3E <comment><AUTHOR> [http://atlas.apache.org/](http://atlas.apache.org/) Data Governance and Metadata framework for Hadoop</comment>


Physicists discover 'apparent departure from the laws of thermodynamics' - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-08-physicists-apparent-departure-laws-thermodynamics.html <comment><USER2> Note from end of article: it is not claimed to actually violate the laws of thermodynamics.

<comment><USER3> Right, because this result has been observed in other systems (notably nanocluster beams in vacuum). Phys Rev B and Phys Rev Letters Are good places to look.

The key to understanding is that this system can NOT be treated as a canonical ensemble--it is properly treated as an evaporative ensemble, so the results are even more counter-intuitive than the micro canonical ensemble.</comment></comment>


PDE-Based Image Compression - <AUTHOR> http://www.mia.uni-saarland.de/Research/IP_Compress.shtml <comment><USER2> New compression algorithms are always interesting because they reveal a new way of describing a photograph in a succinct way. The overlap between image compression and image searching is surprisingly high because the same techniques are used to derive the most important part of the picture data. Even if a new compression isn't ideal for image transmission, it is pretty much always a new avenue to look at for image matching/searching.

Coming from the other side, corners and edges are great ways to describe an image when doing process. It's a natural step to use this data for compression, which is what the authors have done here.

<comment><USER3> > It's a natural step to use this data for compression, which is what the > authors have done here.

I understood the pixels for compression were chosen randomly, not by how much they define the main features of the picture. Or you meant the selected pixels are assumed to be defining features when reconstructing the image?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel very much a sense of uncanny valley looking at the PDE-based images. The extreme jpeg images /look/ mechanically compressed, whereas the PDE images seem to be almost but not quite natural in the results. I'm curious as to what the results would be with an image compressed to say 1:10th its original size

<comment><USER5> The goal is to provide a similar _enough_ image to base any residual coding. Xiph.org folks have a good example of exploiting such redundancy in the video compression format [1].

[1] [https://people.xiph.org/~jm/daala/paint_demo/](https://people.xiph.org/~jm/daala/paint_demo/) (was later abandoned due to the high cost, and now we have [https://people.xiph.org/~jm/daala/deringing_demo/](https://people.xiph.org/~jm/daala/deringing_demo/) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The jagged edges on straight lines is interesting, it looks to me like this could get closer to the input image with a little bit of intelligent anti- aliasing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Could this be used in graphics rendering? You output only a few pixels and then fill the rest using this algorithm.

<comment><USER8> Sampling is already an integral (ha!) part of rendering. Not exactly in a way you're describing, apart from maybe sparse lighting passes like global illumination. Even then, it's more about random distribution and probability density functions than anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how suitable this technique would be for compressing video, since it seems to work on volumetric data.

<comment><USER10> I'm wondering how well deep learning would work for compressing video. For example, the face of an actor, when it has been exposed from different angles in the first 5 minutes of the movie, need not be fully coded for the remainder of the movie. At least, that is what intuition says.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Comparing to JPEG seems somewhat dishonest (or thoughtless), considering the large parts of one color in some of the images. PNG and other algorithms not designed for detailed pictures would probably do better.

<comment><USER12> No. PNG is lossless, it will do a really bad job at compression. Even those uniform colors won't actually be uniform because they are from image sensors.

JPEG is the appropriate comparison, as the authors are solving the same problem as JPEG tries to solve (i.e. a good enough lossy compression for natural images).

<comment><USER13> PNG doesn't need to be lossless. You can identify the pixels that are requiring more bits to compress, and change their values to make them easier. It's not as good as JPEG, but I suspect it'd be comparable to this for the same level of quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do they choose the interpolation points?

What PDE are they using?

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it just me or is the article a bit lacking? I couldn't for example see a comparison of file sizes or a reference implementation.

<comment><USER15> The captions showed images for the same compression ratios. It seems that, like jpg, you set some slider for how much compression you want. Since they select some % of source pixels it's a bit more easily calculated than jpeg "quality".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this technique related to compressed sensing?

<comment><USER17> From what I can tell skimming their papers, no. Their technique really is based on solving a PDE to fill in the gaps in the image. Neat idea and I'm a little surprised that it works so well. Compressed sensing relies on an equivalence between a discrete and a continuous optimization problem under very specific assumptions, which allows the sparsest possible solution to an underdetermined linear system to be found. In this work, there's no optimization, so no compressed sensing.</comment></comment>


Hacka2thon - Ann Arbor's first annual 36 hour hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://www.hacka2thon.com

<comment><AUTHOR> If you guys have any questions, feel free to ask them here. This will be our first crack at what we hope to be a bi-annual event for Ann Arbor, and we already have over $2000 in prizes for the event. We hope you guys will come!

<comment><USER2> Why 36 hours? For the 24-hour hackathons I usually stay up the whole time but 36 plus the surrounding time might be pushing it. I'll try it though :)

I see that the tickets are limited in numbers based on what they bring to the table: dev, design, biz. What was the thinking behind doing it this way? The page mentions that it was to make sure to get enough devs, I don't recall that being a problem at the hackathons I've been to.

(On details page say typo: says that have over $2,00 worth of prizes.)

<comment><AUTHOR> For me, 24 hours felt like too little to get something very cool out. However, I had the same mindset as you in that I felt a 40 hour or 48 hour hackathon I would never be able to stay up for. So, I decided to meet in the middle: 36 hours :)

The idea behind the tickets was that, this was first and foremost about programming, meaning I wanted designers and developers to make up the majority of the attendees. I felt while Startup Weekend was building a startup from scratch, this was about building a great product — and not having to worry as much about the marketing, business profitability, etc. I had also been scorned after going to a "Engineer and Entrepreneur meet and greet" in Ann Arbor and realized that everyone there was looking for a programmer, and there were no engineers/programmers at the event. My number one worry was that people would come and would all have ideas, but no one to build those ideas.

Thanks for the typo as well, we fixed it right away!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Man, the last time I had set foot on Michigan's north campus was about 8 years ago. Hope the attendees enjoy themselves, Ann Arbor is one of the best college towns in the country.

<comment><USER4> I was thinking it was on north campus at the first glance, but actually it's at the new North Quad on central campus. (And another building on nearby Washington St.)

<comment><USER5> The other building is the Techarb, a student startup accelerator - <http://cfe.engin.umich.edu/techarb/> My startup, Fetchnotes, works out of there, it's a great place.

<comment><USER3> Color me jealous. Wish this was around when I attended...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You have dangling "I"s on the homepage. I couldn't find who "I" was.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll see if I can tighten up the wording a bit

<comment><USER6> Cool. I regret that I can't make that date due to prior commitments, but I've forwarded this to some people who may do various things. (Can't commit them to anything since they probably haven't even gotten my email yet. :) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "first annual" lol. Love when people don't make grammatical sense.

</comment><comment><USER8> Go Blue!

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting</comment>


How to raise $1 Million+ outside of Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://launchdfw.com/venture-capital/how-to-raise-1-million-outside-of-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ufg2a_F...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ufg2a_F7QdMJ:launchdfw.com/venture- capital/how-to-raise-1-million-outside-of-silicon-valley/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)</comment>


DevTools: FusionAuth installs on any box with or without containers - <AUTHOR> https://fusionauth.io/blog/2019/02/07/download-install-mac-tutorial <comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to find anyone using Keycloak and see what they like most about it, and what we could offer in FusionAuth to make it compelling to consider switching - if IBM buying Red Hat wasn't enough of a reason. :-)</comment>


Save Blink or die trying - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adnrw/saveblink Watch as we follow one man's battle against the odds to save <blink> from evil Mozilla corporation. <comment><AUTHOR> One man's courageous battle to save <blink> from the evil Mozilla corporation.</comment>


Ask HN: Minimum Authentication/Authorization Features for a on Prem Web App? - <AUTHOR> I've developed a web application (an event Dashboard really) that is starting to get more users, but it doesn't have any authentication yet, instead it relies on the user to setup their own authenticating reverse proxy, and as you might expect, authentication is a highly requested feature.
The app so far is something install on-prem, I don't have a cloud hosted version, but don't want to rule it out. Its mostly likely to be used by the IT and/or security team and small to medium size orgs.
What are the minimum features of AA I should be offering? Its not that hard to simply add .htpasswd type auth, but its something I want to attempt to get right the first time.
If it matters, its a single page web app built with Angular 2, and the backend is Golang.
I need to think about some sort of RBAC and/or ACLs as well.
Thanks for any input. <comment><USER2> My app [1] uses Auth0 for cloud authentication, which gives me login with Google & GitHub IDs. The on prem deployment uses pywin32 for Windows Auth, which is important in corporate environments that will require you to work with Active Directory. So I can use Windows UIDs like DOMAIN\userID. I can also map my rights groups to AD groups. My system isn't open source, but I do include all the JavaScript and Python source. So if you grab the download [2] you can read the pywin32 code in ssauth.py, as well as the Auth0 integration in the JavaScript and Tornado based backend Python.

[1] [http://spreadserve.com](http://spreadserve.com)

[2] [http://spreadserve.com/s3/downloads.html](http://spreadserve.com/s3/downloads.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure I totally understand the question.

A simple username/email and password solution seems like it'd solve authentication, but isn't that obvious?

Authorization depends totally on what your app actually _needs_ , e.g., do different users have different roles? How fine-grained does the authorization need to be?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess what I'm asking -- Is simple username and password enough?

Is just a "user" level and an "admin" level enough? I guess this is perhaps a bit app specific.

Is authenticating against RADIUS, or AD a must? Okta? How about Google Apps? I don't think GitHub is important in my case. Whats come to be a given here?

<comment><USER3> Nothing's a "given".

No way to know if non-granular "user" and "admin" are sufficient. For a lot of apps they are. For many it's more of a "user of a group" and "admin of a group" which is still straight-forward. Granular authorization can be a challenge if it wasn't architected in at the beginning, but even then it just depends.

In terms of authenticating against providers, who knows. For me, local auth, Google, FB, Twitter, and GH are more than enough, but your needs may vary.</comment></comment></comment>


The story of the greatest adventurer alive today - <AUTHOR>

An interesting article on Jason Lewis who became the first person to circumnavigate the Earth without using motors or sails. He walked, cycled, & inline skated 5 continents, & kayaked, swam, rowed, & pedalled a boat across the rivers, seas, and oceans. It took him 13 years to complete, the 46,505-mile journey. This is an interview with him on what those 13 years were like, why he did it and what's next for him.<p>http://zidilife.com/jason-lewis-the-journey-in-between/ <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [http://zidilife.com/jason-lewis-the-journey-in- between/](http://zidilife.com/jason-lewis-the-journey-in-between/)</comment>


Ask HN: Are web developers on the chopping block? - <AUTHOR> I graduated in 2009 and have been a web developer since then (Ruby, Python, Javascript). I really enjoy it, but I feel like the writing is on the wall for standard CRUD web development. I dont' believe the threat is immediate, but I'm only 30 and I would imagine my career will have to last much longer than that, and the good times will end far before I retire.
Ultimately I can already see my profession being automated or commoditized in some way (see Gigster) and that I should start shifting my skills towards something more defensible to future automation, like AI, AR/VR, Robotics, or HCI, but I don't know where to begin from a professional standpoint. Hobby projects? Courses? Not sure what will actually make an impact on shifting my career that way, or should I just get into management ASAP so I can rely on management skills to keep me employable?
Perhaps there are older, more seasoned HNers who have seen shifts like this before and could provide perspective? Or maybe I'm just overly paranoid and scared by all of the machine learning articles I'm seeing on HN these days and I'm living in a bubble of overachievement? <comment><USER3> Here's how you can convince yourself that web developers are still valuable in the face of automation, all the while learning a new skill:

1\. Get yourself set up with a machine learning framework e.g Torch or something like that

2\. Read a few articles to get familiar with how recurrent neural networks work - I recommend [http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn- effectiveness/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/)

3\. Train your RNN on Ruby / Python / Javascript code samples.

4\. Look at the garbage output despite the working input.

Web developers will be needed for a long time. I'd say we are looking at 20+ years before any automatic development algorithm could replace the coding chops, not to even mention the architectural and operational (security, hosting, etc) skills, needed for modern web development. People rag on webdev all the time as though it's somehow below AI / AR / VR (personally I think AR/VR is the next hype bubble, as no one has found a decent use for it besides games), but even if its just CRUD it takes skill, thought, and competence to make it worthwhile for you and your clients.

Additionally, you could jump ahead of the game by creating a utility or framework that makes web development even easier and then monetize that.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes and no.

Yes: A lot of web-development has already been automated for simple sites. Think of how many more web-development jobs would need to exist if Wordpress and Squarespace and other CMS systems weren't powering so many blogs and simple crud apps.

No: Unlike other workers who face being automated out of a job, web-developers _are_ the people doing the automating. Wordpress and Squarespace are being built by developers, after all. In order for my job to no-longer exist, some other engineer has to come in and build something that replaces me. So if you want to be future-proof, all you need to do is make sure you're the developer _doing_ the automating, instead of the developer being automated.

In short: it's dog eat dog. Keep eating other dogs and you'll be fine.

<comment><USER5> Spot on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The risk to today's web developers is something that - most realistically - makes web developers so much more efficient that a few people can un-employ many of their fellows. Wordpress and ThemeForest (and their predecessors) did this to the Perl::CGI programmers and HTML jockeys of an earlier age, and e.g. React/Bootstrap/Parse are trying to do this to today's jQuery/Rails experts.

For now, there's plenty of demand if you (can) upskill - those "DHTML experts" who jumped to Rails are still fully employed creating _more complex_ sites (rather than _more_ sites.)

As an alternative to just trying to be better than your peers, patio11 has talked about combining two not-spectacular skills (e.g. programming and Japanese, or programming and marketing) into a very attractive package. E.g. HCI could fit with web programming, as could an appropriate hobby, as could business skills (e.g. [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself- a-pro...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a- programmer/)).

If you just want to do something hard, AI, AR/VR, and Robotics can all work - but those are all fields which employ far fewer people than web development, and job opportunities will similarly be more limited (e.g. geographically dispersed). You'll need a bit more direction and motivation than "more defensible to future automation". To get a feel for what you like, hobby projects and e.g. Coursera can both work fine.

Alternatively, if you have a Silicon Valley salary, you could simply aim to retire by 40.

<comment><AUTHOR> This actually was super useful, and yes, HCI is my biggest interest, but I'm having a tough time integrating it other than trying my best to be a UX expert where I work - though to be honest HCI seems to encompass a bit more than UX and it's hard to integrate the more academic aspects of HCI into simple web development.

<comment><USER6> Just being a web developer/UX expert - if you are really good at both - <USER2> already a pretty defensible position, although perhaps not a very rare one. Leveling up in HCI will help.

Another part to consider for your career strategy: if you can convince your boss that it's in his/her best interest to send you to a course or conference in topic X, that will give you both more knowledge and a semi-official "local expert" status. Once you're recognized as the local expert at X, people will bring all the hard/educational X problems to you, letting you level up quickly.

(This works best if the topic comes up quite often, but not so often that everyone has an opinion. Every web dev has some basic UX skills, but consider e.g. Information Architecture, A/B Testing, etc. - or some kind of clear "needs more-than-basic UX" category. Someone who actually knows his HCI would be in a better place to help you define the latter category, I'm afraid.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I work in compliance technology, and I suggest you move into this area if you would like to keep programming for many more decades.

Benjamin Franklin's saying regarding death and taxes is still relevant despite being written in 1789. I believe it is also relevant in regards to creation of laws.

Last year in the US, the federal register grew by over 60,000 pages. That does not include any rules implemented by other regulatory bodies. That is just one year.

The Dodd Frank law was over 2,000 pages. The Affordable Care Act was countless thousands of pages that did not include the thousands more of rule making that would follow.

Compliance is expensive in any industry, and you have to be in compliance with the rules and regulations of your industry if you want to continue doing business.

There will always be a demand for technology related to compliance because there will always be new rules and regulations being created.

<comment><USER8> I work for the government making programs to help people comply with our regulations and we are getting to the point where the reg writers can write regs faster than we can make user interfaces for them (+ support all the existing stuff we have). Difficult to sell management on more reg writers implying a need to hire more programmers, at least until someone sues us for failing to comply with our own regulations...

There is no doubt that compliance is fertile, if boring.

<comment><USER7> I think it can also be exciting. In some cases the volume of requests requires you to research a better set of solutions.

I am given some leeway to come up with creative solutions that can scale.

Also since compliance is so broad, you get to work on many different aspects within a company. You can really improve the lives of the people in the company or institution by just coming up with an automated way to handle some of the mundane tasks involved in compliance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Beyond the specifics on how websites are actually implemented, what's most important are the "soft skills", aka the people skills. Tech moves forward all the time but sitting down and interacting with a client to grok exactly what they're looking for in order to deliver ahead of schedule and below budget is what will make you stand out in a crowded space.

</comment><comment><USER10> No. CRUD apps will always need people to implement custom business logic. Businesses will always need programmers to sit in on meetings with the client to explain what is actually going on in the code. Webservices will always be a hodgepodge mess.

</comment><comment><USER11> In no way will this be going away anytime soon. Even if you have maybe something like factory methods to churn out your standard CRUD routes 90% of the time you've got custom logic on other routes and things like that. There will be a need for a very long time I believe.

</comment><comment><USER12> The "Yes and No" answer by MalcolmDiggs makes good points, and I want to add to the "Yes". There has been a lot of effort around front-end design patterns that makes Web Development a lot easier. There will always be room at the top for talented individuals doing cutting edge work, but the middle and bottom end of the talent pool is being carved out by tools like bootstrap, angular, etc. You have a lot of back-end engineers doing basic data-binding on HTML, and using bootstrap to "make" the right "components", then you have a designer come in and make the CSS, etc look nice.

Add to the growing number of tools that automate a lot of the core constructs that websites now adhere, to, and...yeah...I'd say the future is kind of bleak for people who can only do JS/CSS/HTML.

<excursion> The web is starting to look a lot more standardized these days than it used to. In a lot of ways it's less impressive from a certain type of aesthetic. I remember the web circa 2009 was a lot flashier, people showed off quite a bit more than they do now. Now, users expect you to follow well established design patterns. They want to get in, get their information/data/service and get out, they don't care about your cool little reflection animation on your buttons.

In my opinion the web has kind of grown into what it's supposed to be, a fairly simple user interface around information, dynamic content, audio/video, and web applications. All of these things used to blur into one another. I think you're seeing a fundamental shift in both a labor market (web development), but also in an increasing consensus among users, and institutions as to what the web should look like. </excursion>

Edit:

I also want to add that this is what automation always tends to look like. There will always be special use cases, etc, but someone comes along and figures out how to build tools that cover 90% of people's use cases, we all adopt it and call it "standard" (cf photoshop, etc). I don't know what the back-end construct will look like, but it's happening. AWS killed a lot of potential operations work. Lambda, Heroku do a good job of abstracting 90% of most people's networking/scaling concerns. This stuff happens imperceptibly.

<comment><USER5> JS will be valuable for a long time. It's the core of the web and the web will be around for a long time, if not forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it the opposite, for every process I automate, _other_ people are losing jobs. My code is replacing manual people processes. Someone needs to maintain that automation.</comment>


Apple to lose iPhone trademark in Brazil: source - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/05/us-brazil-apple-copyright-idUSBRE91417G20130205

<comment><USER2> It's ridiculous, they have a campaign to explain _their_ iPhone is not _the_ iPhone. They even highlight how their product is _worse_ than Apple's (saying things like, "the Apple iPhone is faster, has more resolution"):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkRf6Gv4NtU>

They probably made the campaign so no one can sue them for false marketing later, though they will surely sell units to uneducated parents thinking they got a really good deal on an iPhone for 1/3 of the price.

<comment><USER3> How is it ridiculous? They registered first, they say that their iphone is clearly not an Apple iPhone, they show the differences, so what's ridiculous about it? Seems pretty clear that it was their trademark first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This makes me happy.

Did you know at least one other corporation had a trademark for the name iPhone before Apple announced their choice of product name in 2007?

Considering what patent trolls Apple is, and considering Brazil is a sizable market for smartphones and computer equipment, this is a tiny bit of karma, as far as I'm concerned.

BTW, Xerox has yet to see money for inventing the OS GUI and the modern mouse.

<comment><USER5> Do you mean the infogear/linksys/cisco iphone? The one that was discontinued in 2001?

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1127>

A mark shall be deemed to be "abandoned" if either of the following occurs:

(1) When its use has been discontinued with intent not to resume such use. Intent not to resume may be inferred from circumstances. Nonuse for 3 consecutive years shall be prima facie evidence of abandonment. "Use" of a mark means the bona fide use of such mark made in the ordinary course of trade, and not made merely to reserve a right in a mark.

<comment><USER6> Strange that a trademark should only last 3 years of non-active use when copyright is lifetime + 70 years. I guess there's IP and there's IP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Translation goes around these lines: On the year 2000 (Apple's iPhone only came in 2007), our marketing department needed a name for our "internet phone", the name was too big so we decided to use "iphone" instead. We filled the patent register in the same year and in 2008 the INPI gave us full patent rights.

Now they proceed to explain how Gradiente's Iphone is a piece of garbage, they could have added that Apple's iPhone on Brazil costs 2 or 3 times more than on other countries, but they didn't.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think that this decision can stop Apple from sell iphones here in Brazil. We pay an huge amount of money for apple products because of government taxes (an iPhone 5 costs the equivalent of U$1.300) and I don't think Apple sells a lot of iphones here to compensate buy the trademark. Sometimes it's cheaper to take a plane and buy it in another country. I understand that Gradiente has the right to fight for the name, after all they registered it first. But they don't have an real competidor and are just use the name to fight with Apple for money (patent troll?). That's wrong and everybody loses.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if they will sell it to Apple now that it has been established that the IP belongs to someone else.

I don't think the question is so much whether this is wrong / right, but how does Apple proceed from here?

What kind of price could be negotiated?

Will Gradiente take it, or is the confusion worth more?

<comment><USER10> My understanding is that Gradiente only released their phone to prop up the ip claim who's registration was running out. The whole point for them has always been to get a fat check from Apple and it looks like they will. Apple is no stranger to writing checks for their tendency to run roughshod over other people's IP. That's not exactly what happened here but, like with the ipad in China mark, I imagine they'll end up writing a hefty 8 digit check for the iphone in Brazil rights.</comment></comment>


Trello introduces Power-Ups: Calendar, Card Aging, and More - <AUTHOR> http://blog.trello.com/introducing-power-ups-calendar-card-aging-and-more/

<comment><USER2> Just enabled card aging, looks like a really useful extra piece of visual information. I can see which cards have got stuck in the pipeline and the cards in the backlog that perhaps could be pruned.

The idea of aging is something that I'd like to see in other contexts. For instance in sublime it would be great to have files that I haven't touched in the last hour just close automically. That way my open file list would only include the files I'm actually working on.

<comment><USER3> Emacs has actually had that feature for awhile. It's a bit of a mixed blessing, to be honest; while it's great that you don't have to remember to close files when you're done with them, the asymmetry of the feature (files don't magically open when you want to go back to them after they've been reaped) tends to make it a bit more frustrating than useful to me. It'd be interesting to see a more user-friendly implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Finally a worthy Google Calendar replacement?

</comment><comment><USER5> This, with their new webhooks, makes me want to dig in and get this working along with our other project management tools.

I really like the "aging" idea.

</comment><comment><USER6> +1 for the pic of a bsg viper. i want a viper power up -> it just puts a viper card on every list.</comment>


Ask HN: How to price properly to get maximum income? - <AUTHOR> Hello guys, I'm running an app that is worth $2,000. Now, the payment of the client will be 50% initial for using the app then after wards 50% when they are satisfied by the app.
The problem I'm having is a long term income generating app. As I can view it when the contract is done I need to, again, find new clients and do the same pricing in which when I don't have one then I will be stuck or worst close business.
Is there a strategies or other payment plans on how I can make customers and my service do long term contract that will maintain the business and hopefully make it bigger or sell it to companies. <comment><USER2> The obvious answer is to offer (or require) a maintenance plan. Charge XX% per year for a given level of support, updates, and maybe a newsletter.

Here's a list of some common revenue models: [https://taprun.com/revenue/](https://taprun.com/revenue/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Make sure your contract clarifies the end state of what you're delivering and that continual updates are not included / would be a possible future but separate SOW.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had a buddy who designed this web app a few years ago for a client of his. He was young and relatively new, and he charged the guy $500 to do it. The guy made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Years later, all of the APIs for the app are pretty much deprecated and things are breaking. The whole app needs a redesign.

The guy approached my friend letting him know that he needed to update it. My friend said it would be a lot of work and he didn't really feel like working on it. The guy said it was urgent and this was his livelihood. My friend came back at the guy with a price because the whole system basically needed to be re-developed and he was going to probably make it better than it was before -- having almost a decade now of experience. His quote: $25k.

The guy refused. As I said before: A guy who was making hundreds of thousands of dollars off this app refused to pay my friend to update it. Of course, he could take his business elsewhere, but my friend knew the app well because he designed it.

Another story to go with this in a way: I purposely did not update a clients' website for almost 5-6 months. Guess what happened? Exactly what I thought would happen: things started breaking. My client contacted me letting me know that things were broken, thus solidifying my justification for why I charge for monthly updates. Clients think that they can pay once and thats it. Sure, go ahead. But the web is changing so fast and especially things that rely on API that you just need to be handy.

Here is the thing by not doing that: If you go in months later, you have to figure out what you did, remember what is going on, try to fix it, etc. If you are in there monthly just to maintain it and update it, you have a constant reminder of the work you have done and the general maintenance helps you keep in contact with the client.

I have had it happen: I built a website/app for a guy and he was busy doing something else... I kept the web app on a private server and it was nearly done. He contacts me over 2 years later telling me he wants it to go live, but not before having a whole bunch of changes. I had to go in there, understand where I left off, and pick up where I left off to finish for him.

Anyways, my point of these stories is this: Know that once you develop it, you cannot guarantee what it will need in the future, or any bugs that might occur, but whether it needs monthly or yearly updates, you should incorporate that into your initial price, or monthly/yearly invoices, just so you can keep checking up on it, make sure everything is working, etc.

If they need things fixed during the course of the year, you can charge them by the hour, or just come up with a fair monthly price, even if you do no work on it -- just helps you keep everything in check.

You could also come up with an affiliate plan -- pay them a percentage for referring you to other potential clients -- on work completion, of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. That is a good insight. I currently had scrap this project until a client needs on then. By the time I continue developing it I was lost and do another readings on where I left off.

I think monthly fee and checking the app would be good for right now. It seems that I'm going to where your story is saying. Having it sold and not knowing anything about it after months might bite me in the future.

Thanks for the advice.</comment></comment>