How I Designed a Compact Weatherproof Raspberry Pi Camera Case - <AUTHOR> https://tinkererblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/how-i-designed-a-compact-weatherproof-raspberry-pi-case/ <comment><USER2> That's a nice looking case! I love these posts where someone talks through how they tackle something that's new to them.

I didn't see any silica gel bags in there. Are you going to check it for condensation in a few months?

You may want to consider a suitable grease for the seals. Silicone O rings are nice, and you can get silicone grease for them. If there is a lot of temperature change (night & day; summer and winter) you might want to consider a conformal coating.

(I used to build machinery that would go down coal mines. These devices were in hostile conditions. Each machine was expensive, and the machines they controlled were expensive, and lost production was expensive, and there are human lives involved, so failure was not wanted, so I tend to go a bit over the top with this stuff.)

<comment><USER3> Another good way to deal with condensation is to have a small resistor based heater in the case.

<comment><USER4> Or the RPi cpu should do, right?

<comment><USER3> It might take a good bit more power than that to keep a box clean of moisture. One reason is that the day-night cycle will expand and contract the air effectively working as a pump pulling wet air in.

<comment><USER5> I am glad to know your feedback on the post. I will consider changes in the next version and include longer period testing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A great case, but I think it's beyond weatherproof and into the realm of waterproof or immersible. A weatherproof enclosure need not be sealed to such an extent.

And there is an upside to not sealing. If you plan that water will somehow get in, say by including a drain hole on the 'down' side, then the inevitable crack or other slow leak won't result in catastrophic flooding.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is brilliant - you can then pipe the video into say a TK1 and do some "danger recognition" outside your doorstep (or family recognition). The only issue is, it appears the usb cable can be pulled out easily, just a tug downward?

<comment><USER5> Thank you for the feedback. I will keep this in mind for the next version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like it, but one thing stood out to me. Sharp corners in the path of a non- moulded seal can cause leakage and premature failure. I recommend that each of the four walls not terminate in a sharp corner with the round, but a small radius. Then the seal could make more gentle bends in front of the holes, instead of wrapping around them, taking an octagonal path around the part. Also, those deep corners are not readily CNC machinable, if you ever wanted to go that route.

</comment><comment><USER9> So cool and so clever. It's well explained and it looks so easy. It proves that you don't always need great instruments/material to make something awesome. In your case, you didn't need to get a weatherproof inspection machine, you did your inspection by yourself. Congrats!

<comment><USER5> Thank you very much for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do good night vision cameras exist for the pi which would work with this? I use a number of cameras with zoneminder but will soon be replacing a few...a pi-based system would be great if night vision support was baked in.

<comment><USER11> Google "pi noir."

<comment><USER10> Thanks. It's a shame that there's no built-in infrared leds built in, but I suppose those can be added somewhat easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really great. I've never actually read up on anyone building something that they had 3D printed. Nice work.

<comment><USER5> Thank you and I am glad that you liked the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder what CAD software they used. It's crazy how easy this is now that 3D printers are so readily available. I guess the other option would have been to have it made on a CNC mill?

<comment><USER5> Fusion 360

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool project--I just stuck mine in a Pelican case with a few holes/grommets for the wiring.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for sharing my post here and all the great feedback.</comment>


SURVEY: "Ethereum Is Doomed" or "Ethereum Is the Forefront"? - <AUTHOR> https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3JBMJ77 <comment><USER2> hopefully your survey does a better job at predicting the future than the polls, big banks and bookmakers whom got Brexit wrong.</comment>


Ask HN: 45-minute "unblock me on my personal project" consultants? - <AUTHOR> Hi folks,
I'm trying to get back into doing side projects for my own learning. However, I have a problem and I'd like to know if I can trade money for a solution.
Back when I was in uni or a new grad, I frequently repeatedly had a problems with package managers, setting up test frameworks, figuring out how to use a debugger to get to a point in a test, package managers, other development environment issues, and especially package managers. My response back then was to spend hours yak shaving and going down rabbit holes. As a student, this led to a lot of wasted time. When I got to the workplace, this habit led to me getting some pretty strongly-worded feedback that I needed to get better at asking for help when I ran into these sorts of problems. After a few years, I've mostly gotten over the "I'm not a real engineer if I only have a surface-level understanding of npm" feeling. Asking well-framed questions leads to a coworker popping up and unblocking me pretty quickly and the team as a whole moving more efficiently.
But what do I do for personal projects?
Is there anyone who has a really solid understanding of npm, gems, rvm, protractor, node-debugger, etc. and offers the service where I can book time on their calendar a week from now, send them a clear description of my problem, and videochat with them for 5 minutes to 45 minutes and then pay for 45 minutes of their time? What would rates generally be?
Folks with experience doing consulting or services, how would you structure such a transaction? Would it be best to have someone on retainer? Or would they just have themselves up on calendly as described here: https://calendly.com/pages/customer-stories/freelancers-and-consultants ? <comment><USER2> I'm a consultant and I have a client on an arrangement like this, where I don't really do much actual work but just give advice. I structured it as an up front retainer that I bill hourly against as I'm needed.

I wouldn't do it without a retainer because the extra friction of an hour here and there is not really worth it unless I can get a nontrivial amount of cash up front, which helps balance my cash flow while working on other longer term projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> _npm, gems, rvm, protractor, node-debugger, etc_

Random advice from the internet. The root problem space is NP. Ignoring that NPM -> node and javascript, gems -> Ruby && gems -> g >= 2, rvm -> Rubies >= 2, protractor => Angular, and minimizing etc. to c == 2, there are 7! combinations. Or more visually, a graph with 5040 edges.

      1.3e12

More realistically, there are > 15! edges. Prune the graph with 99.99% efficiency and you've still got a billion things to get wrong, misunderstand, ignore or wire together. Consider starting with the simplest thing that might work. Side projects probably don't need end to end testing. Probably not Node and Ruby. At least in the beginning.

Circling back, to the 7! there are only a handful of humans with those qualifications, even fewer of them that are consultants, and ~0 that are likely to read this thread. It is likely that you are among the leading experts on the 15! technology.

All this complexity gets dealt with by teams. One person knows RVM, Gems (2!). One person knows NVM and Node-Debugger (2!). One person knows Protractor and etc. (3!) and the problem space starts to look more like P than NP.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very good point that I knew, but didn't express clearly in my OP and is exactly the sort of thing that I _should_ be good at communicating. I definitely would want to

> Side projects probably don't need end to end testing.

yea, with Selenium is a frustration that I generally avoid. I recently discovered [https://www.cypress.io/](https://www.cypress.io/) which I'm just getting started with.

On the general point of keeping it simple: I definitely agree that you shouldn't add tools you don't need. But automated testing is necessary self- care for software development.

<comment><USER3> My comments about testing were specifically triggered by Protractor which seemed to be a technology that was creating friction. More generally, testing is like any other engineering decision: subject to a cost benefit analysis not an end in and of itself. In the end, all that matters is the business logic...to the user.

Something I sometimes see with people's side projects is a box full of tools thrown in the repository upfront and then little or no progress followed by abandonment. My take is that all that tooling for continuous integration and automated builds and so forth gets added because doing so is easier than solving the problem. Or more importantly building some prototypes and proofs of concepts and designs that fail. I suspect from observation and experience that all that tooling makes prototyping and spikes harder and more tedious due to configuration and complexity. Or to put it another way, setting up Selenium and Jenkins and whatnot right from the start looks like progress but isn't because there is nothing to test and no application to continuously deploy. Trying to avoid writing the app twice (or three times) often results in writing it zero times.

<comment><AUTHOR> > In the end, all that matters is the business logic...to the user.

If you're trying to build a side business and a side project to support that business, you are 100% correct. If you're trying to build a side project for your own learning, then the user is the developer, the primary interface is the codebase, and all that matters the developer experience.

But you should start by understanding what developer experience you are trying to achieve and design from that. Trying to get yourself set up with a good red-green TDD loop? Adding Jenkins from the start _is_ probably a mistake because it won't help you with your local dev environment. However, if you're starting out learning node then getting webpack configured will probably help you. But here too there is a trap: you want to avoid just collecting a list of tools you don't know and trying to assemble them into a dev environment all at once without guidence. I once spent a week trying to do that with gulp and it was nuts. This is one area where talking with someone who is experienced with the language's ecosystem will help you. At best, that person can point you to a recommended setup. The very least, that person can point out that some tool is 2 years old and doesn't play well with the others because it is out of date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This describes 60% the personal interactions I see and participate in, just hanging around a hackerspace. Actual collaborations happen, but a large portion is just unblocking each other -- the little tap on the shoulder, "hey, I think there's a better way to do that" \-- and then going back to working on one's own stuff.

I wonder if there might be a social solution to this, simply by changing where you do your work.

<comment><AUTHOR> > simply by changing where you do your work.

I'm totally interested in finding a place in London where I can show up with my laptop on a Sunday.

I used to hang out at one of these spaces in uni and found that I went down rabbit holes a bunch still. I suspect that my question-asking skills have improved to the degree that I can mostly avoid that now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Buy a yellow rubber duck. Describe to it where you've gotten stuck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a plushie goat and this works for some things. In particular, when you're stuck on something which you mostly understand but you're missing something or when you are comfortable working at that layer of abstraction.

But for development environment issues where the key is some piece of knowledge like "run rbenv rehash" that you just don't have, it doesn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I guess you are looking for something like Codementor: [https://www.codementor.io/](https://www.codementor.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh, that looks like exactly the place I'm looking for. Fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> codementor.io is what I use when I want to be walked through a solution to a problem I'm having.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic. This is what I was looking for. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can use Upwork for that as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> I hear you. I hate package managers. Package managers are introduced by misguided people not in order to solve a development problem, but a _language popularity_ problem.

Newbie programmers don't know enough to pull individual libraries that they need and put them into their project in a sensible way that they then understand. This causes a newbie language to lag behind popularity against other newbie languages that have package management, or else have needed features built-in. Solution: cave in and make a package manager here too.

However, the package management eventually causes problems such as depicted by [https://xkcd.com/1987/](https://xkcd.com/1987/)

Package management, other than at the OS distro level, is an antipattern. Language packages should be installed by the OS distribution's package manager. E.g. on Debian or Ubuntu it should be "apt-get install whatever". Not "apt-get install idiotic-manager" followed by "idio install whatever".

<comment><USER10> It sounds like you're frustrated with some complexity surrounding package managers.

They can be complicated but they're not invented to torture people. They solve real world problems.

Some are better than others. The best thing I can say about Rust's Cargo is I have no clue how it works because Its never given me cause to find out (ok I roughly know).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would recommend a different approach. Look at what you are trying to do, like the jobs to be done framework. If you want to build side projects, build side projects. Use simple tools that are easy to learn, have many examples, and have a helpful community.

</comment><comment><USER12> I use twitter hashtags to unblock me.

</comment><comment><USER13> Those who made you that feeback are wrong. Package managers suck (especially npm). Do what's comfortable for you not the others.

Customers don't care about git and such things. I don't use git because I find it useless for the projects I'm working on.</comment>


Student loan company stole millions,leaks sensitive phone calls,SSNs,tax records - <AUTHOR> https://cybernews.com/security/student-loan-company-stole-millions-leaks-phone-calls-ssns-tax-records/ <comment><AUTHOR> i think this is pretty important, so i'll TL;DR:

"We recently discovered an unsecured Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket that contains more than 55,000 call recordings between loan support workers and American consumers with outstanding student loans.

This open database also contains more than 25,000 PDFs, many of which are scans or photos of proof of income (such as pay receipts or tax returns). Both the proofs of income and call recordings contain the loaners' social security numbers, among other sensitive personal data.

The database seems to belong to members of the Student Advocates Group, which an FTC press release named as a student loan debt relief scheme that "bilked millions out of consumers by charging illegal upfront fees and falsely promising to lower or even eliminate consumers' loan payments or balances."

Because the bucket contains sensitive data from people across the US, including California residents, the bucket owner may have to pay damages and penalties under the CCPA, since:

-The leaked data contains highly personal information (including names plus social security numbers and tax ID numbers,) -The data is both non-encrypted and non-redacted (all samples in this article have been redacted by CyberNews) -The leak is "a result of the business's violation of the duty to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the information.""</comment>


Show HN: A Highcharts Library for Polymer 1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://avdaredevil.github.io/highcharts-chart/ <comment><USER2> Really awesome, looks like really nice interfaces you've created. Great work.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm the developer, I can answer any questions you may have!</comment>


Linux terminal keylogger in userspace  - <AUTHOR> http://average-coder.blogspot.com.ar/2012/02/linux-terminal-keylogger.html

<comment><USER2> Here's a solid way to log actual keys from the keyboard (rather than just terminal input) using evdev. It's not good for, say, logging keys of a headless server, but it is good for logging keystrokes from a computer with a monitor and keyboard.

source code: <http://git.zx2c4.com/evdev-keylogger/tree/>

      zx2c4@Thinkpad ~ $ git clone http://git.zx2c4.com/evdev-keylogger/
      Cloning into 'evdev-keylogger'...
      zx2c4@Thinkpad ~ $ cd evdev-keylogger/
      zx2c4@Thinkpad ~/evdev-keylogger $ make
      cc -O3 -march=native -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe    logger.c keymap.c keymap.h evdev.c evdev.h process.c process.h   -o logger
      zx2c4@Thinkpad ~/evdev-keylogger $ ./logger -h
      Evdev Keylogger by zx2c4

      Usage: ./logger [OPTION]...
        -d, --daemonize                     run as a background daemon
        -f, --foreground                    run in the foreground (default)
        -u, --force-us-keymap               instead of auto-detection, force usage of built-in US keymap
        -e DEVICE, --event-device=DEVICE    use event device DEVICE (default=auto-detect)
        -l FILE, --log-file=FILE            write key log to FILE (default=stdout)
        -p FILE, --pid-file=FILE            write the pid of the process to FILE
        -n NAME, --process-name=NAME        change process name in ps and top to NAME
        -h, --help                          display this message

It has the ability to daemonize, log to a file, and mask itself in the process table. Far from what a real kernel rootkit logger could do, but instead it's clean and reliable.

I used to actually have this in my git repository with a little thing in there that would connect back to my server when run, and then I had a README and notices all over in the source code and makefile and everywhere that you should remove this part of the code before compiling, under all circumstances. Anybody reasonable would have seen the notices and removed the code. The idea was that this way I'd know how many script kiddies were abusing it, and if maybe it was a bad idea to keep it up there. Well, in fact I did get a lot of connections, and it was kind of horrible to see. Then I forgot about it, until seeing this post. So I figured, either I take it down, because script kiddies, not people who are merely curious to see how a key logger works, are using it, or I keep it up there. In the end, I decided to stop being a dick, remove the connection thinger, and now the HN crowd will hopefully find something interesting to learn in it. A failed experiment at dealing with the script kiddie situation, oh well. At least, now, my code is untainted.

Anyway feel free to email me or leave a comment here if you find any bugs or have patches, or whatever. The code should be pretty basic to understand.

<comment><USER3> Speaking from personal experience, some of your incoming connections may not have been people abusing your keylogger. Personally, the first thing I do when I play around with any source code is compile, run, and test it.

<comment><USER2> There were lots of notices. You couldn't have missed it.

<comment><USER3> My gennerally approach is: 1) Download source 2) Uncompress file 3) ./configure 4) make 5) ./[name of binary] 6) Read documentation/source_code/other_stuff

<comment><USER2> Aside from the fact that that's a horrible habit, even following those steps, you couldn't have missed it.

Anyway, enough of this discussion. Let's talk about the actual keylogger -- Comments? Questions? Suggestions?

<comment><USER4> Just want to add first of all that I generally read the ReadMe first. \--

Besides that, what do you (zx2c4) think of Linux? Do you think it's a safe platform?

I think it still has a long way to go. _Most_ programs require root access to install; and even ones that don't need root still have access to all user files. This is a but of problem.

Contrast this with iOS, where every app has local storage and one app cannot read another's files/data. On Linux & Android the problem of data security (among others) is persistent.

<comment><USER4> For some strange reason, zx2c4, the comment you made under mine is dead. (Try logging out and seeing if it's visible.)

I don't know if you've been banned. If you have, that would bee very strange. Why would someone do that? Were they pissed at the fact you shared potential dangerous code that could be used to infiltrate the OS run by many HNers?

Or you might have hit some sort of reply-depth. (Just guessing here.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is cool, but seems overly complex. A few friends and I played "capture the flag" with our personal systems, and a few times passwords were obtained with a simple shell function wrapping sudo. The first time the function ran (based on whether or not the output file in /tmp existed) and 1/5 times after that, it would simply use read -s, and and write the password to the output file. The other 4/5 times it ran, it would simply 'exec /usr/bin/sudo "$@"'.

People don't seem to think twice about failing a password auth.

<comment><USER6> I used a very similar approach in the mid-ninties to get full root access to all of our high-school's systems (which was technically not even illegal at this time and place). The output file used a simple single-character XOR obfuscation, to make it a little bit less obvious if someone looked at the log file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Trapping fork/execve is probably overkill here. Since the user will often just type su or sudo, all that 'malware' needs to do is modify PATH

</comment><comment><USER8> Logging in as root from a virtual console (ie, a login prompt spawned directly from init) shouldn't give away the root password, even with something like this in place. Someone would have needed root access already to interfere with that since init (getty, etc) and X all run as root. Of course, the moral is still to use root as little as possible...

<comment><USER9> On a system that uses sudo (like Ubuntu's standard account setup), having access to a non-root administrative user account (with sudo privileges) is equivalent to having root access. _And nobody can fool themselves into thinking this isn't the case, because the account is explicitly flagged as "this account can become root."_

Because the exploit in the article exists, on a system that uses su, having access to a non-root administrative account (that accesses root regularly through su) is equivalent to having root access. _But it's not as obvious that this is the case._

This means the sudo setup is more secure (with respect to this exploit), because it doesn't pretend to have a level of security it doesn't actually have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't is curious when OS's don't keep track of non-system software ... when it's installed, what process installed it, whether that process was under local control, any other info to indentify the source ... and to list that information on demand any time any user wants it?

What's up with that? It's as though we're happy that we can be infiltrated at any time. It's not like people don't put weeks and months into "me-too" websites ... but there's never been any major motion in the direction of making the existence of surreptitious mods available at a key-click?

Such apps may exist, but I've never run across one for any platform explicitly designed to help anyone root out what's been installed without their knowledge. It CAN'T be that hard. Link it up to an open online knowledge-base that will nix false flags ...

</comment><comment><USER11> My old and somewhat related PoC project for screen casts, but still working. Just checked (debian wheezy with stock kernel 3.2.0-4-amd64). It requires building and loading simple kernel module, though.

Apparently nowadays debugfs is owner-only rw, so you have to change it or start it as root.

<https://github.com/przemoc/kaos>

Look for the top-right corner to see the effect while you're typing or clicking something.

P.S. Funny thing is that I don't know why I wrote >>Kprobe dependency can be easily removed by writing own input handler and it will be done in future<< back then, because when I evaluated this statement year or so ago, it didn't look that easy, and there would be more code in the end, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER12> All of our deployment scripts at work use SSH to accomplish their tasks. All of the tasks are prepended with "LD_PRELOAD=", and I've always wondered why but never bothered to look it up.

So when would you want to use LD_PRELOAD?

<comment><USER13> In the past I have used it to make fsync and similar a no-op. ( This allows you to explicitly turn off data-security for certain processes, in order to either get performance, or to prevent them from affecting the rest of your system)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a way to send a secure attention command to su/sudo to protect against this?

<comment><USER15> Echo the LD_PRELOAD environment variable first and check for anything suspect.

<comment><USER16> the twist: echo is also hijacked...

<comment><USER15> Okay... just type "Export" then.

<comment><USER17> okay, so now the getenv call is hijacked too. You can play this game all day, as long as the environment is stored in user space, you can get it and fake the output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I recall correctly Magic SYSRQ offered the ability to kill all running processes using a shortcut impossible to bypass (along with other shortcuts, like one for killing the X server 'no question asked' and no possibility whatsoever by X to dodge the kill -9).

So basically you had to go first to a virtual console (in text mode) and then issue the Magic SYSRQ shortcut.

That would kill all processes running on that console and you'd be sure to have a stock prompt without any kind of software keylogger.

I don't know if Magic SYSRQ still exists or not for 64-bit Linuxes, it's been a while I haven't used it.</comment>


Who reads books anymore? - <AUTHOR>

Admittedly, I am not into fiction, and I can get magazine quality content on the web, so why read books? <comment><USER2> For me, reading non-fiction books allows me to interact with historical figures and understand how they approached problems as well as how they arrived at their solutions. I've been reading many auto/biographies lately and more and more it has helped me realize that most over-night successes are really 20 years in the making.

edit: Another thing that has helped me is in learning grammatically correct english and sentence construction. This is something that I have yet to find in abundance on the web.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is much deeper knowledge in books. Just learning from the internets and reading magazine articles will keep you updated but make your knowledge shallow.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, I don't read newspapers either, unless placed in front of me for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with a lot of the other commentators. I am a voracious reader, with normally 3-4 books on my reading stand at any point that I read at different points during the day. Reading provides a very cheap and easily accessible form of entertainment that allows you to exercise your imagination and creativity, and provide a wealth of detailed knowledge (even if it were fiction - a good fictional story can provide an insight into different situations, cultures, even the psyche of people in general)

A good book can keep you company at any point in time in a day, and more so, stay with you a lot longer (this is true even with fiction). I have found myself going back to several books over the years, because some are _that_ good.

Having said that, there are a lot of crappy books out there (I have commented about that earlier) and invariably you will get one that is despite checking it out (amazon reviews etc). That has not prevented me from continuing to find good books, and it should not deter anyone else either.

A quick cursory glance over amazon's best-seller lists will give you a good overview on the types of fictional books, and you will quickly see that almost every kind of curiosity can be satisfied - technical, mystery, espionage, war strategy, sci-fi, you name it...

And yes, staring at a tube-light all day cannot be a good thing...

</comment><comment><USER5> Literature is often of higher quality than magazine articles. Non-fiction books often delve more deeply into a subject than a series of articles. Many books are not available online in their entirety; at least not for free. And when I do spend money on a book I expect paper.

It also gets your eyes off the monitor. These things can't be healthy to stare at 18 hours per day.

</comment><comment><USER6> by not being "into" fiction, you're closing off the vast majority of why you would want to read books. if your only purpose is to simply learn about stuff, you can do a pretty good job of it online.

i read books for many reasons:

1) pocket-sized entertainment w/o requiring electricity.

2) reading bulks of text on the computer is hard on the eyes, imo.

3) reading a book exercises the imagination and creativity more than watching or listening to something.

4) writing a book/novel is an art form and skill. supporting it by buying quality works is important, imo.

5) i personally personally know/knew several authors who make their living 100% by writing. i buy and read their stuff to help support them.

6) a typical book has higher quality content and more depth than what you'll typically find online.

i'm sure there's plenty more reasons, i just can't think of them right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Computer (with internet) however:

\- is basically free (or cost of retrieving new content is free)

\- tabbed browsing makes scanning fast

\- broadband makes news pages load quicker (or similar) to turning a page

\- commoditization of blogs and cms via open-source means more noise, but also more signal

\- instant publishing

\- large lcd screens can be dimmed, and font sized enlarged

There is wisdom on the web, and books are still mobile and reliable. Text books are important, but in my view the case for books is lessening. (unless you like fiction, but much classic literature can be found freely on the web due to copyright expiration anyway).

<comment><USER6> > Text books are important, but in my view the case for books is lessening. > (unless you like fiction, ...

making a molehill out of a mountain, aren't we? more specifically, i think, a hasty generalization. just because you don't read fiction or something doesn't mean that others also don't.

i'll agree with you if we're talking about the NICHE of instructional/scholastic/informational/reference books. i don't read those types of books.

when you use the term "reading a book", though, you're typically referring to reading for recreation/entertainment, which is typically going to be fiction/literature. i do read those, and so do the vast majority of my family and friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You have a false dichotomy here: I read books (for free) _on_ the internet.</comment>


Whitmer: Michigan closing all K-12 school buildings - <AUTHOR> https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/education/2020/03/12/detroit-area-schools-close-plan-online-classes-coronavirus/5031113002/ <comment><USER2> Forget how they're going to learn remotely, who is going to watch and feed those kids? A very significant portion of US lower and middle income families depend on the public school system do those exact things while the parents work. They quite simply do not have a parent who can stay home with the kids unless they want to lose source of income.

The severity of the impact on the livelihood of these people and the residual impact to the economy cannot be overstated.

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree that it will have an economic impact and cause a lot of pain in the short term, but this is also very likely to stimulate some positives economically as well as environmentally.

Some parents are now going to be working at home, side by side with their kids attending school at home. While this may not be ideal all the time, it's not a terrible thing to make all of this work. We're all going to be set up for telecommuting and online education going forward. If nothing else, it's less fossil fuels being burned.

Just like WW2 got us out of a depression and started us on a huge economic upswing -- and yes, at an immense cost -- this might have a similar effect, albeit on a smaller scale. I would not be surprised if 6 months from now, with the virus gone and a whole lot of disruption behind us, we'll find it stimulated the economy more than it hurt it.

<comment><USER4> I think you're trying to put a positive spin on what is clearly an appalling situation, but I think it's important to remember that at the heart of this people are going to die. People are going to lose parents and grandparents. The UK prime minister literally said that in a statement yesterday ("many more are going to lose loved ones before their time", [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-51862282/coronavirus-pm- say...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-51862282/coronavirus-pm-says-more-to- lose-loved-ones-before-their-time)). Talking about how you believe it'll be good for the economy within 6 months is both a bit heartless and possibly _very_ wrong.

<comment><USER3> Ok, well lots of people talk about its impact specifically on the economy, so I'm not sure how it is heartless, but ok. Can I only talk about the negatives? That feels dishonest, I'd think the HN audience can handle both sides of that particular part of the picture.

And late comedians are making jokes about the whole situation right now. Not about the deaths, but about other aspects of it.

<comment><USER4> $11.5 trillion dollars has been wiped off the stock market in the past few weeks[1]. That's not just the virus because there's an oil price war going on too, but it does seem like suggesting it'll be back to normal in 6 months implies you don't understand the scale of the problem.

[1] [https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock- market...](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market- outlook-2016-trump-win-gains-erased-coronavirus-risks-2020-3-1028991585)

<comment><USER5> > suggesting it'll be back to normal in 6 months implies you don't understand > the scale of the problem

No one knows the scale of the problem. It's the uncertainty that's driving the volatility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the US trajectory for COVID-19 is anything like Italy's, we are 6 days away from going from 1k cases to 15k cases.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Italy)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER7> Not if there aren't 15k test kits, it's not.

<comment><USER8> Reminds me of the show Chernobyl

<comment><USER9> Ouch, I fear that this may unfortunately turn out to be the case

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seems to be happening everywhere. They just announced an hour ago that they are closing schools in my daughter's school district (Burlingame California), and switching to online learning. That was quick...I am honestly a bit excited to see how online kindergarten works.

I'm also wondering if the internet infrastructure will handle this well, with so many people working and going school remotely, with a really fast ramp up.

<comment><USER7> I've been making K-12 plans for three weeks. You shouldn't be excited. It's one thing for people to prepare and plan and develop a curriculum that is suited for online learning. It is another to be told at a moment's notice to shut down schools and turn to online learning.

And the internet is going to be fine, although individual sites with a sudden increase in traffic (Zoom, Skype, Office 365, etc) might have issues.

<comment><USER3> Why shouldn't I be excited?

I'm not saying I'm happy this is all happening, but I can be interested in seeing how all this works and see the positives, can't I?

Should I tell my kindergartner to be all grim and sad, or tell her that this is an adventure?

<comment><USER7> For kindergarten, sure. But juniors and seniors? They don't need excitement, they need stability.

<comment><USER3> Technically I was saying I, as a parent, am excited to see it.

I don't know that older kids really need stability so much. I mean, maybe overall, but I don't see why this is a big deal for them. (for the parents, trying to juggle work and this? sure)

Kids adapt to stuff like this fine. If they really need stability so much, maybe we should get rid of vacations...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If anyone is struggling with being an involuntary homeschooler (especially if you are WFH and doing childcare at the same time), please reach out. I'm trying to compile resources to help

And if you don't have kids but want to help out, hit me up

<comment><USER11> Yup, I'm in Kirkland where it hit first in US. My sister in Cincinnati was asking for advice on what things to stock up on. I said "nannies".

Fact is, everything is slowing down because everyone is in the same boat. It seems like an unsurmountable problem at first, but after a few days of everyone recognizing it's for the long haul, you quit worrying about it.

That said I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg and we'll look back and wonder how we worried about such petty things.

This is going to hit small businesses hard because they can't just stop hibernate for a while and survive. IDK what they'll do. I have a feeling this recognition will hit and we'll realize how deep the economic dire straits we really are in the next few days. And that's before we even start talking about the medical part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Several bay area school districts announced closures today too: [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/school-districts-around- th...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/school-districts-around-the-bay-area- announce-closures-affecting-tens-of-thousands-of-students/ar-BB117f9D)

I live in southern California, and today the 4 school districts near us announced 2-5 day closures for next week, with status updates coming afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER13> Oregon just closed schools through March.</comment>


Booking Wonder Woman Tickets in Hyderabad, with a Twist - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dht93/WW-tickets <comment><AUTHOR> Related blog post: [https://dht93.github.io/tech/2017/05/22/booking-wonder- woman...](https://dht93.github.io/tech/2017/05/22/booking-wonder-woman- tickets.html)</comment>


An MSG Convert Visits the High Church of Umami - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/an-msg-convert-visits-the-high-church-of-umami <comment><USER2> I've talked to many otherwise perfectly rational folks who get worked up about avoiding MSG when it comes to Asian food — but still go out and buy liquid aminos or eat foods that are caked in it.

<comment><USER3> I just checked the ingredients on my liquid aminos and it doesn't say msg. Their website says they don't add it, but there may be "very small amounts" that naturally occur from the soybeans. Please explain.

P.S. I have no reaction to MSG I just don't understand why you would think someone is being irrational.

<comment><USER4> Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is an amino acid bound to a sodium molecule to make it into a shelf stable powder. Much like table salt (NaCl) is a sodium molecule bound to a chloride molecule to achieve the same. When they contact the water in food they both dissolve into the component molecules.

So really what you're talking about is glutamate which is a very widely occuring amino acid. It's "non-essential" which means that your body produces it. Almost all fermented foods contain it (including liquid aminos). Cheeses, meats, vegetables, etc contain it. It's very likely that you eat several times as much naturally occurring glutamate in your diet as you would if you used MSG in your cooking.

Basically if someone says they are allergic to MSG, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain glutamate, is like someone saying they're allergic to table salt, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain sodium, which is not medically plausible.

The flip side is that very high blood concentration of sodium can cause medical issues, and people worried about glutamate argue that a similar effect is going on when you eat MSG, but research so far indicates that at normal dietary levels, you're fine to sprinkle a little of either molecule on your food.

<comment><USER5> Your chemistry is scarily bad, are you trolling? When elements combine into molecules the result often behaves very differently from the components.

> Basically if someone says they are allergic to MSG, but not allergic to all > of the other foods that contain glutamate, is like someone saying they're > allergic to table salt, but not allergic to all of the other foods that > contain sodium, which is not medically plausible.

OK, so how come I can eat table salt but chlorine alone will kill me?

Go back and complete that chem 100 course

<comment><USER6> Indeed consuming protein molecules which contain glutamate is different from consuming free glutamate in the form of MSG.

We can draw a ready analogy to saccharides. It is like denying the effects of sugar because indigestible complex carbohydrates are made of sugar and do not produce those effects. "A blood sugar spike doesn't exist because cellulose is made of sugars, and I've eaten a large bowl of moistened sawdust without experiencing such a spike. It's probably an imagined effect or maybe caused by something else, such as a response to anti-caking agents in the sugar."

Why is MSG used in the first place on foods which already contain glutamate? For instance, why is it used in Vietnamese lemon grass chicken recipes, given that chicken protein has tons of glutamate? It's because the glutamate that is locked up in protein doesn't produce the taste effect of MSG.

So why don't these naysayers deny the existence of the taste effect of MSG also?

As in: "Gee, I don't believe that MSG can possibly be a flavor enhancer, because boiled chicken breast contains copious glutamate and yet tastes bland. People who say that flavor is enhanced by MSG are just imagining it due to confirmation bias fueled by mass hysteria."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article rather understates the use of glutamate in the body.

> _it is an essential building block of protein found in muscle tissue, the > brain, and other organs._

It's not only found in _every_ organ, it's present in 99.6% of all human proteins, out of 20328 only 72 do not use glutamate, and of those 29 are keratin proteins.

<comment><USER8> Interestingly, though (just to digress -- your point is quite valid) it's not an essential amino acid for humans. Obviously it's required to make proteins, but if we don't get enough in our diet our bodies will synthesize it.

It's just interesting that the molecule we evolved to recognize as a "protein!" marker in our food turns out not to be one of the protein submolecules we actually need to surive.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you, but it makes sense that we may have evolved to be able to synthesize it. Since it's such a crucial amino acid, it would be an advantageous adaptation to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> MSG is fine, but I stubbornly cling to the notion that high quality ingredients should yield umami taste without adding MSG. To me it's similar to using ripe red bell peppers that are sweet, without needing to "fake" it with cane sugar. It's easy to turn dishes into caricatures by taking basic tastes to extremes. I'm no miso soup expert, but shouldn't it naturally have MSG from the seaweed, fermented miso paste, tuna, and tofu?

Still, perhaps it's a bit silly because I don't blink when adding salt.

<comment><USER11> From a culinary perspective, the flip side of that --- referenced in the article --- is that sometimes you want the umami taste sensation without clouding the flavor of the product you're "seasoning". You can bump umami with soy sauce, parm, or tomato paste, but not without adding soy, parm, or tomato flavor. MSG lets you turn that knob while mostly keeping the pure flavor of the rest of the dish intact.

<comment><USER12> I identify with both of these issues, and have mixed feelings about MSG.

I'm a sort of accidental vegetarian, in that I never really decided to become one; the rest of my family is vegetarian and I stopped eating meat because it was inconvenient, and then gradually I lost interest in it.

I realized at some point MSG is really useful for adding umami flavor to things without adding other flavors, like seaweed or tomato or mushroom. It is wonderful for certain things, and makes some vegetarian dishes basically indistinguishable from those with meat. I think it's a little odd that people will go out of their way to add unusual strong-flavored ingredients for the umami, when you could just add MSG.

At the same time, MSG on its own to me has a really cheap umami quality. It reminds me of really cheap frozen dinners and bad food from elementary school. For awhile I couldn't get over that, and then eventually realized that when it's used in complement with the right things in the right amounts, it works great--you just need to figure out the right settings.

So sometimes those natural sources of umami just seem contorted and more trouble than they're worth. Other times, they seem to supply umami in a way that doesn't seem cheap or one-dimensional.

I suspect that there's some other component of many "umami" flavors we haven't discovered yet, or other tastes that technically aren't umami but would be identified as such currently. It's difficult for me to believe that MSG is really capturing most of what I like about savory dishes; I feel like something else is missing. I'm waiting for other amino acid salt receptors to be identified; I wouldn't be surprised if they're somehow linked in their activity to glutamate receptors or something of that sort.

<comment><USER13> A really poignant writing, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you can tolerate chicken stock, you can tolerate MSG. It's as simple as that.

<comment><USER3> I just checked the ingredients on my organic Costco chicken stock. The ingredients do not contain MSG. I found a website that asked Costco about their "natural flavors" and got a response that it does not contain soy, or dairy, and no MSG is added.

Is it really that simple? Please explain.

<comment><USER14> Chicken stock contains natural glutamate because chicken itself contains it. It's what gives chicken stock its savory flavor. Moreover, your body makes its own glutamate, too. So yes, it's that simple. That's why they say "no MSG is _added_". This is similar to how a lot of meat products say "no nitrites are added", yet use celery juice which is naturally rich in nitrites to prevent meat from turning brown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article mentioned that glutamate is currently produced by fermentation with molasses as the main feedstock. I found a fascinating open access article about the history of glutamate production here:

[https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/90/3/728S/4597145](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/90/3/728S/4597145)

The author is an employee of Ajinomoto Co, Inc., the same company that the author of the New Yorker article visited.

Abstract:

 _In 1907 Kikunae Ikeda, a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University, began his research to identify the umami component in kelp. Within a year, he had succeeded in isolating, purifying, and identifying the principal component of umami and quickly obtained a production patent. In 1909 Saburosuke Suzuki, an entrepreneur, and Ikeda began the industrial production of monosodium L-glutamate (MSG). The first industrial production process was an extraction method in which vegetable proteins were treated with hydrochloric acid to disrupt peptide bonds. L-Glutamic acid hydrochloride was then isolated from this material and purified as MSG. Initial production of MSG was limited because of the technical drawbacks of this method. Better methods did not emerge until the 1950s. One of these was direct chemical synthesis, which was used from 1962 to 1973. In this procedure, acrylonitrile was the starting material, and optical resolution of DL-glutamic acid was achieved by preferential crystallization. In 1956 a direct fermentation method to produce glutamate was introduced. The advantages of the fermentation method (eg, reduction of production costs and environmental load) were large enough to cause all glutamate manufacturers to shift to fermentation. Today, total world production of MSG by fermentation is estimated to be 2 million tons /y (2 billion kg/y)._

</comment><comment><USER6> Melissa O'Brien at UBC has directly observed the effects of MSG on the blood flow in the dura in rat brains:

[https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/...](https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0224000) [2016]

She basically takes it for granted that MSG causes headaches and is looking at the mechanisms.

 _A recent study found that a single oral dose of 150mg /kg taken consecutively for five days resulted in headache and muscle tenderness when given to healthy young men (Shimada et al. 2013). Older work concluded that MSG consumption did not induce symptoms of pain or sensitivity but many of these studies have been scrutinized for their poor methodology (Tarasoff and Kelly 1993). Without definitive proof that MSG is harmful, it has been cleared in the United States and Canada as safe for human consumption and can be added to foods without regulation from Health Canada._

Lots more in this paper; very good work.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone know if the brand mentioned (Ajinomoto) is any better than Accent? I mean, MSG is MSG, right?

<comment><USER15> Yes, MSG is MSG. Accent apparently has at least two products.

Pure MSG:

[https://www.amazon.com/Accent-Flavor-Enhancer-lb- canister/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Accent-Flavor-Enhancer-lb- canister/dp/B0017TN3UC)

And a seasoning mixture that contains MSG, salt, and a mixture of spices:

[https://www.amazon.com/Sa-son-Accent-Seasoning-Original- Pack...](https://www.amazon.com/Sa-son-Accent-Seasoning-Original- Packets/dp/B0017OGVP6)

I have only ever seen the first kind of Accent before (crystals of pure MSG) so I too was initially confused about what the author meant when writing

 _I picked up a dusty bottle of Ac'cent-brand MSG at my corner bodega. I brought it home, made dinner, and stepped into the light. After a few months of passionate use, I levelled up from Ac'cent, which includes other flavorings besides MSG, to the more pure and exquisite Ajinomoto..._

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's a thought. People who have persistent "diet related" health problems who also tried every single known dietary avoidance strategy (often with little success) could also get tested for H.pylori.

</comment><comment><USER18> I assume lots of chefs (in high end restaurants) use MSG, but rightly think it could scare off some of their clientele.

<comment><USER19> The words "umami flavours" is a lot more palatable than MSG.

<comment><USER20> But it could refer to ingredients other than pure MSG.

<comment><USER21> Ingredients which in turn would contain glutamates, and likely monosodium glutamate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> TIL glutamate is one of four amino acids that also functions as a neurotransmitter. Obviously, this does not refute any of the science disproving "MSG sensitivity" but I still find it interesting. Further, I wonder if there are people out there that claim sensitivity to aspartate or serine given that they too are both neurotransmitters and amino acids.

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

<comment><USER11> From what I've read, no level of glutamate intake in humans allows it to cross the blood-brain barrier, or, for that matter, even substantially increase the serum glutamate level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love how people claim that MSG headaches are racism and not that MSG vastly differs from cheap salt to liquid aminos.

<comment><USER24> Here's a study for contextualizing:

[https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(00)44233-8/ful...](https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749\(00\)44233-8/fulltext)

I've yet to see one that showed actual adverse effects of eating MSG via food, regardless of claimed sensitivities. I think this is the heart of the "racist" claim - there's no study that supports the existence of that sort of MSG sensitivity out there yet (that I've heard about)

<comment><USER6> The study isn't denying that there are effects.

> _neither persistent nor serious effects from MSG ingestion_

Effects don't have to be serious or persistent for them to be a nuisance enough to avoid!

I don't need six hours of a mild headache/nausea, thanks.

<comment><USER24> This context was important on the study:

> large doses of MSG given without food

<comment><USER6> That could describe the situation when you're drinking MSG-laced soup. The liquid will race ahead of the solids ingredients like noodles and get absorbed first.

If MSG is sprinked onto something dry, like some types of snack food, which is then washed down with a drink, it could also be absorbed fast.

<comment><USER11> This is first-principles message board hypothesizing. In fact, there's enormous incentive in academic science to actually demonstrate a reliable adverse MSG effect, and there has been for _decades_. Why has no reputable study done so? Is it really your argument that no food scientist has ever thought of the study design questions you're alluding to here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _They are willing to bring MSG into their homes as a component in other > foods—more than happy to accept it as a flavoring powerhouse in Doritos, > instant ramen, canned soup, and bouillon cubes, or at least happy to accept > its euphemisms, like "hydrolized soy protein" and "autolyzed yeast."_

Those are strawman avoiders of MSG, not everyone. I avoid stuff which lists MSG under these names. As well as disodium inosinate or disodium guanylate.

I can tolerate some MSG, but if there is too much, I get headache/nausea. That is, it's not like I can't have a few chips at a party.

<comment><USER11> People say things like this about gluten sensitivity, too, often with very detailed self-reporting. But in a controlled setting, outside of celiac, there's not a lot of evidence for NCGS, and it's _very_ likely that a significant fraction of people who report NCGS are not in fact gluten- sensitive. As with MSG, people also have weird ideas about their gluten intake, and as with MSG there's widespread and easily illustrated sensitivity to other aspects of gluten-rich food (for instance, for a lot of people, rapid intake of lots of refined carbs will have immediate insulin effects).

The difference, of course, is that there is an underlying condition that makes gluten problematic for a small number of people --- celiac disease. There is no known "celiac of MSG", despite decades of searching for it.

Anything is possible, but the evidence overwhelmingly suggest that if you're having a reliable reaction to foods with MSG in them, it's something else in those foods you're sensitive to --- most likely salt! --- not MSG.

<comment><USER25> Just to expand on one of the parent's points, Celiac is pretty rare, and affects under 1% of the population. However, Fructose Malabsorption is much less rare, and affects closer to 5% in the US. In spite of the name, Fructose Malabsorption has little to do with dietary fructose, and instead has to do with a class of molecules called fructooligosaccharides (FOS).

Overconsumption of FOS causes bloating, nausea, "brain fog," lower GI upset, and a whole raft of other symptoms that sound an awful lot like what many self-diagnosed NCGS folks report. For folks with Fructose Malabsorption, the threshold consumption of FOS that causes symptoms is less than 10% the level that causes symptoms in the general population.

The confounding thing is that wheat is rich is FOS. So folks who believe they have NCGS stop eating wheat and sometimes feel better. They probably have Fructose Malabsorption, or are suffering from insulin spiking effects from refined carbs, or some other effect. But they heard gluten was bad for you, and when they ate the package of bread that said "gluten free," and stopped eating the normal wheat bread, they started feeling better.

"Middlebrow dismissals" of their condition don't really help them either. True, gluten is almost certainly not their problem. But gluten free food, as a side effect of lacking wheat, often helps them feel better! What are the chances that something similar is happening with MSG? Perhaps added MSG is often found along side other ingredients/contaminants that cause headaches and other reported "MSG symptoms"?

<comment><USER6> > _Perhaps added MSG is often found along side other ingredients /contaminants > that cause headaches and other reported "MSG symptoms"?_

MSG is a clear common denominator. Many people report that if they avoid anything with MSG (under any of its names), they avoid the associated problems. That doesn't mean it's MSG.

Why do studies focus on the MSG? Because they are sparked by the motivation to clear MSG's name (which could actually be right). They don't care about finding the _root cause_ of these symptoms.

The proper scientific approach is to ignore the MSG hypothesis of the self- reported sufferers and get to the root cause, not simply to test that hypothesis and be done.

> _" Middlebrow dismissals" of their condition don't really help them either._

Exactly; same in this MSG situation.

<comment><USER11> Here we find ourselves hypothetically dismissing all the studies ever done on MSG based on broad classes of study design concerns.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


William S. Burroughs's Paintings (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/in_focus/the-art-of-william-s-burroughs-53054 <comment><USER2> I was just reading a bit about Burroughs and put "Naked Lunch" on my to-read list.

Any other recommendations?

<comment><USER3> I really enjoyed listening to his lectures. Two that stood out for me are below.

Creative reading: [https://archive.org/details/naropa_william_s_burroughs_class...](https://archive.org/details/naropa_william_s_burroughs_class_on4)

The ethics of wishing: [https://archive.org/details/naropa_william_s_burroughs_class...](https://archive.org/details/naropa_william_s_burroughs_class_on7)

Or just go through the series in order.

<comment><USER4> Seconded. My personal favorite is a short essay called "The Discipline of Do Easy", around which Gus van Sant has made a narrated short film[1].

Book wise I enjoyed the Ticket That Exploded, Yagé Papers and the trilogy around Cities Of The Red Night more than Naked Lunch.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Always interesting to see artwork created by a murderer.

<comment><USER6> Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. Since threads are sensitive to initial conditions, that's particularly important when a thread is new.

<comment><USER5> I'm glad you're here to protect these cool/hip murderers from the Beat scene. Maybe you can protect submissions about cool/hip pedophile rapist Allen Ginsberg next.

<comment><USER7> I'd be interested to read and talk about an article on Allen Ginsburg's work, I don't think his actions should disqualify any discussion around him.

<comment><USER5> That seems reasonable to me. I have no interest in stopping any discussion about him, only an interest in emphatically stating who he was.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Get GitHub followers - <AUTHOR> http://githubfollowers.com/ <comment><USER2> Apparently github disagrees about this being ok: [https://github.com/simplyianm/githubfollowers](https://github.com/simplyianm/githubfollowers) is disabled

<comment><USER3> Seems to be cloned at [https://github.com/simplyianm/ghfollowers](https://github.com/simplyianm/ghfollowers). Also, it was already posted here by the author several months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8839823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8839823) – without any positive reactions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's the real benefit of having more followers? If they were real followers I would understand but fake ones?</comment>