If a file exists, there is torrent of it. If not, it will be burned - <AUTHOR> http://burnbit.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm having trouble with their use of "burn". Is this a common idiom? I keep thinking it's like.. burning a disc? If you burn a file is that creating a torrent of that file?

<comment><USER3> think feedburner

<comment><USER4> I still don't know what that is.

It seems like every time I stop paying attention for a week somebody has invented a new verb.

<comment><USER5> I've heard of Feedburner (and had an account for a few years), and I didn't make the association. It's not just you.

<comment><USER4> ... and yet you still won't tell me what it means?

<comment><USER5> Sorry.

Basically, FeedBurner was a startup that was acquired by Google that lets you input an RSS feed, and they produce another feed. You keep the original one secret, hand out theirs, and you get analytics and other features.

Compare

<http://watch.steveklabnik.com/posts.rss>

to

<http://feeds.feedburner.com/watch_steve_episodes>

to get an idea. They called this 'burning' a feed. I guess this is what they're alluding to; give me your media file, and I'll turn that into a torrent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every file in S3 can become a torrent just by appending ?torrent:

[http://carltonbale.com/how-to-create-and-seed-a-torrent- down...](http://carltonbale.com/how-to-create-and-seed-a-torrent-download-on- amazon-s3)

</comment><comment><USER7> Add one more little thing to this: a way to expire the original torrent after 24 hours and you have the torrent equivalent of wikileaks.

After the 24 hours have past it's whackamole time.

I started building something like that a while ago when wikileaks did their 'shut down' play.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, I can see this making major waves. It seems like this would be legitimately useful tech for any site with legal media downloads, but the fact that the top of the site deliberately links to torrents of movies etc means it probably won't be used this way.

Does this technology expand the scope of who the authorities go after for piracy? Will takedown notices extend from beyond the torrent to the site that seeded the 'burn' of it? Or am I misinterpreting what it does?

</comment><comment><USER9> Registration does not support firstname.lastname@example.com.

It should.

</comment><comment><USER10> So BitTorrent clients will use the real server as a "peer"? That's really cool; seems like the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER11> "Web seed" has been supported by various clients for a while, it's good to see someone finally taking advantage of it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_(protocol)#Web_seeding

<comment><USER12> And the spec for HTTP-based seeding: <http://bittornado.com/docs/webseed- spec.txt>

<comment><USER13> If clients implemented that spec then burnbit wouldn't work because it requires specific server support. Here's a different spec using standard HTTP range requests, which makes a lot more sense: <http://www.getright.com/seedtorrent.html>

<comment><USER12> I forgot about that one. It is much simpler to implement on the client-side, as well. And Bram and Arvid apparently contributed to its development.

The main benefit that I can see to the bittornado spec over getright is that it wants to be able to " _Intelligently tell peers how long they should wait before retrying._ " Which seem like a pretty reasonable things to want to have the server be able to tell the client. Rather then simply block the user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Shame it doesn't support HTTPS yet.

Would be nice if there was an option where you simply go to:

[http://burnbit.com/directburn?url=http://example.com/somefil...](http://burnbit.com/directburn?url=http://example.com/somefile)

And then a .torrent file was returned in that single http request. Rather than a webpage being loaded which contains a link to the torrent file.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have been looking for a way to do this for a really long time -- Amazon supports this by adding ?torrent at the end of S3 files, however it has always been really flaky. I am really, really excited about this!

</comment><comment><USER15> From my understanding of the service this seems like an excellent idea. The one main weak point of torrents is that old torrents die or get painfully slow. Keeping them alive for longer is a superb service.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just burned the final Python2.6 release to play with this

<http://burnbit.com/torrent/153621/Python_2_6_6_tar_bz2>

<comment><USER17> I've downloaded and will seed for a couple days or so, at the least - in the interest of testing. :)

Also, I've uploaded my album for a little larger test:

[http://burnbit.com/torrent/153663/Daychilde_Journey_Beginnin...](http://burnbit.com/torrent/153663/Daychilde_Journey_Beginning_2010_zip)

<comment><USER18> I added the file to my torrent tool, but the only seeder online (you) somehow won't start to transfer the file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> But it consumes a lot of bandwidth of the service provider to burn these torrent, doesn't it? I'm wondering how the business to be sustainable?

<comment><USER20> No, it doesn't.

If you're asking about the bandwidth incurred by burnbit.com, no. They're just acting as a public bittorrent tracker, which does nothing other than tell its clients to connect to other people. Bandwidth consumption is trivial for a tracker.

<comment><USER19> But burnbit.com has to download the file and computes the hash signature to build the torrent file, if the URL hasn't been submitted by somebody else before. Did I miss anything here?

<comment><USER21> Maybe they have free incoming bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I still wish there was a popular, easy way to send large files directly, without using 3rd-party bandwidth.

This requires the file to be available on http. If my grandma wants to send me a large video clip, she's not going to know how to put it on a web server. (Also, a web server is 3rd party in this case.) IRC direct connect and AOL's IM client are the closest I can think of, but neither are at the level of popularity/ease-of-use for my grandma, not to mention the technical hurdles of firewalls (and the security concerns firewalls are addressing.)

As far as I know, this is an unsolved problem that has created a work-around market (dropbox, rapidshare-style services.) But perhaps the work-around market exists for a reason: there is no revenue in letting users directly connect to one another.

</comment><comment><USER23> My confusion was along the lines of only the torrented web will survive?

</comment><comment><USER24> That's really nice and I like the semi-fluid layout of the site. Trying to burn www.burnbit.com says connect recursion ;)

</comment><comment><USER25> it's pretty cool idea to let people create their own torrents for their files on their blogs/sites/etc. they provide the torrent tracker server so you don't have to use thepiratebay or something like that.

      toy.story3.flv 46.5% complete 1.67 GB  =)

<comment><USER26> Clearly this is an omen for what this service will become: A haven for pirates.

<comment><USER27> Or, you could think of the legitimate uses ... someone who just wants to offer something for download, and then has to pay a fortune in bandwidth. Instead, someon uses this service, and we all benefit! \-- Ayjay on Fedang

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow, but I guess this doesn't work on file sharing sites like mediafire and some such?

<comment><USER29> Nope.

It'll work with anything that will give you a direct download link. Since the business model of file sharing sites depend on making you look at ads before letting you download the file, they don't have any reason to do that.

<comment><USER30> Most of those services give you a link that only resolves to a direct download once you've looked at ads and filled out a captcha and even then only if you haven't hit some download limit (or, alternatively, if you're signed in as a paying customer). I don't see how it could work with those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How is this different from BitTorrent Inc's DNA?

<http://www.bittorrent.com/dna/dna-overview>

</comment><comment><USER31> Hmmm.. I am not sure if any file needs a torrent. For eg, my /etc/passwd file.

</comment><comment><USER32> Someone needs to make every file exists into an NZB, with RARs and PARs.

Personally, i still maintain thats the best method of downloading large content at full speed with a built-in mechanism for error-checking

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure if you're kidding, but why would you prefer NZB/RAR/PARs over bittorrent?

Bittorrent has basic hash checking, will re-download as needed from peers and most usefully you don't have to extract anything afterwards.

<comment><USER32> I'm certainly not kidding, but nor am i technically adept as your goodselves, so i'm more than happy to stand corrected.

I havent used BitTorrent in a very long time, simply because i was endlessly frustrated waiting for peers to come online for many files so that i could see from them.

Seems like a constant constraint to me.

My experience with usenet has been quite the opposite. No dependency on peers, and no uploading of my own necessary.

I understand that BTs error-checking may very well be good. I dont have any personal experience of it., but so far as extracting the files and combining them and whatnot is concerned there are many clients available today that automate the whole process upon presenting a single NZB file.

Anyway, this is just my limited experience, and maybe i'll begin to like BitTorrent again one day.

PS. Using binaries from usenet, i also have the option of simultaneous connections (20+) as well SSL and header caching.

<comment><USER34> You have to connect to _someone_ to download stuff. The protocol doesn't change that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Glue is a simple command line tool to generate CSS sprites - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jorgebastida/glue

<comment><USER2> so I am actually wondering why you would even still use a spriting based approach. It seems as if a data-uri based approach would, for all uses I can think of, be more flexible and better, especially if you are using something like compass ( [http://compass-style.org/reference/compass/helpers/inline- da...](http://compass-style.org/reference/compass/helpers/inline-data/) ). for more info:

[http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2010/07/06/data-uris-make- css-...](http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2010/07/06/data-uris-make-css-sprites- obsolete/)

this stack overflow answer brings up 2 possible drawbacks of a data-uri based approach: <http://stackoverflow.com/a/3525961/897583> but it seems like if you are worried about your other css rules being blocked by your data-uri background-images, either put them in a css file that loads after your important rules, or just put them at the bottom of the css file. and it seems like with gzip the increase in size is negligible.

<comment><USER3> The number of bytes in a sprited file can be smaller than the sum of the bytes of each file individually. So the best option might be to inline the sprite :)

<comment><USER2> so chriseppstein, I would be interested in what you (as the creator of compass), in particular, have to say about which would be better: a "Compass Sprite" ( <http://compass-style.org/reference/compass/helpers/sprites/> ) based approach or a compass "inline-image" based approach ( [http://compass- style.org/reference/compass/helpers/inline-da...](http://compass- style.org/reference/compass/helpers/inline-data/) )

edit: oh, so i didn't fully grasp what your comment was saying. are you suggesting that you would use inline-image AND a sprite to put all the images into a sprite AND load that sprite inline with the css?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing to keep in mind when generating sprites is cachability and the various paths that people will take through your site. You should consider the probability of those sprited images being served together on a page. I've seen people blindly sprite all their images on their site, even if only a small percentage of those images are used on a key landing page. This can cause a bad first impression with a slower experience than necessary. Worse still, I've seen people create a separate sprite for each page on their site and complete lose the benefits of local browser caching. While this might look good on a single WebPageTest, it's terrible for your overall performance. A good method is to identify your top landing pages, then look at which images always appear together and might make sense to be sprited. Keep in mind, if they are small and are included on every page, it may make sense to use a data URI instead. You'll also want to make sure to sprite your images in the same order vertically that they appear on the page to allow for progressive loading.

</comment><comment><USER5> This makes no sense to me. It assumes that I'll attach the icon to it's own HTML element because it sets the width and height explicitly. Adding icons to your links won't work this way.

Generating useful sprites is much harder than this guy thinks IMHO.

<comment><USER6> Sprites are used for a lot more than just adding icons to links.

<comment><USER5> Adding icons to links was just one example. If you're coding semantic correct HTML you very rarely have background images that are exactly the size of your HTML element. The way that glue generates sprites makes them only useful for when you're replacing img tags.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Checking it out.

This should be interesting. CSS Spriting was made way manageable with Lemon, a Compass plugin which later became part of Compass Sprite.

The few limitations on the part of Compass Sprite, had always let me do my own sprite, I usually like those tightly packed image sprites.

<comment><USER3> You should tell us what those limitations are :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't get the sprite thing. How is it better for optimization to load every single image of the website right away, and to reload the same picture when the image is modified?

<comment><USER6> For lots of tiny images like icons, you're often better off loading one 200kb image than 100 2kb images. HTTP requests have significant overhead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> cool! wondering how this differs from <http://yostudios.github.com/Spritemapper>

<comment><USER10> good point, spritemapper seemed more confusing although it gives you a fine tuning it lacks the simplicity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How is it compared to <http://csssprites.org/>?

<comment><USER12> Where Glue generates the CSS for you, csssprites seems to expect you to first add all the sprites as backgrounds to the CSS rules you want to use, and then annotate them with comments and then process your CSS to replace those rules with suitable rules.

Glue on the other hand generates the CSS for you, but expect you add a CSS class to the elements that should contain the sprites (or you can modify the generated CSS of course).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> sprite-factory also works with guard <https://github.com/christopherhein/guard-sprite-factory>

</comment><comment><USER14> PHP users. I'm looking for something like this in PHP. Anyone?

<comment><USER15> It doesn't seem like it would be terribly difficult to port to PHP; why not do it yourself?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> what about <https://github.com/jakesgordon/sprite-factory>

</comment><comment><USER16> +1

</comment><comment><USER17> +1</comment>


Tell HN: My HN app is rejected by Apple for showing Covid-related submissions - <AUTHOR> Apple has twice rejected a minor update to my Hacker News app for iOS, Octal [1], for breaking Guideline 5.1.1 - Legal - Privacy - Data Collection and Storage [2]. For the first rejection, they included a screenshot of the app's search functionality, searching for the term "Covid", which obviously contains HN submissions with "Covid" in the titles. For the second rejection, they included a screenshot of the app's main "Top Stories" view, which happened to have a COVID-19-related submission [3] as one of the top stories. Have any other iOS app developers out there encountered this issue with App Store Review?<p>Apple's rejection notes:<p>> We found in our review that your app provides services or requires sensitive user information related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis, services and information related to it are considered to be part of the healthcare industry. In addition, the seller and company names associated with your app are not from a recognized institution, such as a governmental entity, hospital, insurance company, non-governmental organization, or university.<p>> Per section 5.1.1 (ix) of the App Store Review Guidelines, apps that provide services or collect sensitive user information in highly-regulated fields, such as healthcare, should be submitted by a legal entity that provides these services, and not by an individual developer.<p>> Next Steps<p>> To resolve this issue, your app must be published under a seller and company name of a recognized institution. If you have developed this app on behalf of such an institution, please advise your client to add you to the development team of their Apple Developer account. If your client does not yet have an Apple Developer account, they can enroll for one as an organization through the Apple Developer website.<p>[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-hacker-news/id1308885491<p>[2] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#data-collection-and-storage<p>[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24384308 <comment><USER2> _For the first rejection, they included a screenshot of the app 's search functionality, searching for the term "Covid", which obviously contains HN submissions with "Covid" in the titles._

So basically, they were asking you to censor with regards to a specific topic?

 _For the second rejection, they included a screenshot of the app 's main "Top Stories" view, which happened to have a COVID-19-related submission [3] as one of the top stories._

So they were asking you to censor/distort the top stories of the HN site?

We need to escalate these shenanigans in the tech media!

EDIT: Who in the independent media covers stuff like this? Snazzy Labs? Louis Rossman would likely rant about this, but his beat is more hardware.

<comment><USER3> More like the reviewer not understanding how HN works and rejecting just to be safe.

If the developer explain it nicely will probably get the app approved as it is a "reader" app, therefore exempt from some restrictions.

The nice thing about human powered review process is that you can actually reason with them even if they make mistakes. I am huge believer in the benefits of having humans instead of algos to deal with. People on Youtube have their videos removed or demonetized left and right by algorithms that you can't really do anything about.

<comment><USER2> _If the developer explain it nicely will probably get the app approved as it is a "reader" app, therefore exempt from some restrictions._

So the corporate policy is that they'll reject, with a low level of comprehension, and if the developers don't bother to explain, too bad.

From the POV of the reviewer, they benefit from greater throughput, so just low-comprehension reject, and deal with the clarification.

Apple thinks of itself as some kind of advanced, disruptive, with-it company. The way it acts, is sometimes more like an atherosclerotic bureaucracy.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if that's the policy or the reviewer simply screwed up but if the developer doesn't bother to explain, yeah, too bad.

Let's not pretend that explaining what your app does is a huge burden that only few can overcome.

You sign a business deal with Apple to distribute your app, you are expected to do your part. If you think that this is something you rather don't do, then don't work with Apple.

I don't think that having to explain how your app works is a unfair burden in the business.

<comment><USER2> _Let's not pretend that explaining what your app does is a huge burden that only few can overcome._

Let's not pretend that convenient nonsensical seeming rejections, which contradict common sense, and seem to imply a hostile demand of _censorship_ are really an acceptable way of communicating in business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sometimes I really wish we devs did to Apple/Google what we did when anti-net neutrality were forced on us to get this: unite and stop making apps and updates for one day to get more public attention to the 30% extortion and such arm twitting by these two companies.

If 10 big companies and thousand of devs joined Epic right now, Apple would be willing to bend a lot more than its current stance.

<comment><USER5> what is literally tortious is that when user refunds they help themselves to 30% and refund it out of your pocket, as if they are not part to publishing your product and quality checks. It is a cartel like practice needs to be stopped.

<comment><USER6> This has been said before and I believe it is incorrect. Apple refunds the 30% cut in most (all?) cases.

<comment><USER5> [https://twitter.com/MrUglyApp/status/1288887602804752385](https://twitter.com/MrUglyApp/status/1288887602804752385)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From reading the rejection notes, it seems like they misunderstood your app.

You should mail them. Tell them that it is a reader app like Reddit that contains user generated content. If you're resubmitting it for review, also tell them that in the review notes. If they still don't understand your app, ask concrete questions (eg what changes do I have to make in the app store details to be treated as other reader apps like Reddit). Linking to similar apps (in this case HN clients) has also helped me when being rejected.

Based on the rejection notes, they simply misunderstood what the app does and who it is aimed at. Hacker News is not the Apple support and I think you should ask them what to do before asking us.

They have always been helpful when I contacted them. When my apps were rejected, it usually took a simple mail and within a day the app changed back to "Being reviewed", and then "Accepted".

</comment><comment><USER8> The way I dealt with something similar is to replace any link with COVID with a message that says "Due to Apple policy, we cannot show this link in the app. Please click here to see this page in Safari, where it is allowed."

<comment><USER9> seriously? and if Apple ask you to give them 1 million dollar you will do it also ?

<comment><USER10> There's a significant difference between adhering to content guidelines and paying a company $1,000,000

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've had this issue before. I run a feed reader called Pine.blog and App Review has rejected me in the past for content in the feeds the test account was set up to follow. These feeds don't originate on my site or service.

I had to schedule a call with app review and almost needed to escalate the call. It seems like App Reviewers aren't familiar with these kinds of apps anymore. They're used to silos where the app developer could simply ban or reject the content. You need to explain to a human that you're not providing a silo. This is a reader app for another community's site.

</comment><comment><USER12> FWIW a Dutch blog (often satirical, nonsensical, stupid or any permutation of those) also has gotten its iOS app rejected six times due to their stories about covid, but also due to stories about religion and sexuality. Dutch topic about it here [1], automatic translation here [2].

[1] [https://www.geenstijl.nl/5154709/apples-behavior-isnt- new](https://www.geenstijl.nl/5154709/apples-behavior-isnt-new)

[2] [https://controlc.com/ab9b13f3](https://controlc.com/ab9b13f3)

</comment><comment><USER13> Can you send them a screenshot of Safari returning Covid results?

<comment><USER14> They would probably reject the screenshot too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If the web browser wasn't grandfathered-in, the Apple & Google App Stores would ban it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice App OP: [https://apps.apple.com/app/octal-hacker- news/id1308885491](https://apps.apple.com/app/octal-hacker-news/id1308885491)

Your app should be considered a "reader" app for a web service. Just explain that in your message for the reviewer.

Try explaining what HN is and how links are posted etc.

After all, not everyone is familiar with every website and it is possible that the reviewer who is reviewed your app did not understood HN.

Yes it is frustrating but at least you have a human being that you can reason with.

People in youtube who depend on it for living have their videos removed by an algorithm and have no recourse. I don't say this in defense of Apple but in defense of human involved review process. I suggest taking advantage of it by being nice and articulate and have the reviewer on your side.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish the market would begin to shift towards rich-functionality, mobile- optimized, websites on our cellphones, instead of mobile apps. The Apple/Google censorship is just getting too much. If we could use websites on our desktops/laptops, we could use websites on the our cellphones as well. I think this could be done, right?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: I have successfully appealed the rejection for Guideline 5.1.1. However, they decided to immediately reject me for a different guideline - Guideline 4.2.2 - Design - Minimum Functionality.

> We are writing to let you know the appeal results for your app, Octal - > Hacker News.

> The App Review Board evaluated your app and determined that the original > rejection feedback was not accurate.

> Your app is not currently in violation of 5.1.1.

> However, the following issue was discovered during our evaluation:

> Guideline 4.2.2 - Design - Minimum Functionality

> We noticed that your app only includes links, images, or content aggregated > from the Internet with limited or no native iOS functionality. Although this > content may be curated from the web specifically for your users, since it > does not sufficiently differ from a mobile web browsing experience, it is > not appropriate for the App Store.

> We encourage you to review your app concept and work towards creating an app > that offers customers an engaging and lasting experience that also meets the > App Store's high expectations for quality and functionality.

> Apple Developer includes a variety of design and development resources. > Download iOS templates from Apple UI Design Resources, learn more about > crafting intuitive, well-designed apps with the Design Video collection, and > review the iOS Human Interface Guidelines for best practices to follow when > designing apps for the App Store.

This is my life as an Apple Developer.

</comment><comment><USER17> That is so stupid. I bet they didn't reject Reddit mobile app uploads.

</comment><comment><USER18> Google and Apple (and everyone else) have a blanket ban about COVID since the world has been littered with apps and scams trying to profit off the pandemic.

Your app promotes COVID content (among other things) so it gets banned on sight. It's super clear cut, don't do that!

You can try to implement a filter to remove articles with specific keywords (covid, virus, pandemic, etc..). Besides that, don't know if it's good enough to pass requirements for an app (don't think a simple web reader can pass).

Please don't call that censorship. To call this censorship is a disgrace to countries where there is real censorship, people being beheaded for saying anything.

<comment><USER19> A term isn't dictated by its most extreme usage, the case you're describing is authoritarian censorship. Even having to suggest that a filter that removes keywords apple doesn't want their users to see, just may be sufficient for your app to be approved, hints strongly that there is a kind of censorship in place. Arguably not all censorship is even bad, chat filters for obscene words in certain contexts make perfect sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The reviewer (a lowly employee just trying to follow a process) clearly made a mistake and did not follow Apple's guidelines. Manual review processes have plenty of mistakes, resubmit it.

Most reviewers would not have rejected this, i'm sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> I submit it twice and got rejected twice, presumably by 2 different reviewers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> >> Since the COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis, services and information related to it are considered to be part of the healthcare industry.

How do you become a part of the healthcare industry? Does it have to be FDA approved?

Does Apple recognize healthcare apps from companies located in other countries (non US) or will those not be considered as "recognized institution, such as a governmental entity, hospital, insurance company, non-governmental organization, or university"?

</comment><comment><USER22> Do similar restrictions apply to other news apps, aggregators, or social media?

I feel like you should dispute this, but I have no experience with their review process.

<comment><USER11> From my conversations with app developers, and my own experience, this is incredibly common for aggregators. App Reviews are either really unfamiliar with the concept or they aren't trained to understand them and how they differ from silos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> While your application is not accepted by the Apple's app store, I encourage to publish your application as webapp

</comment><comment><USER24> So much for the reform Apple promised. I don't think many people earnestly expected anything to actually change.

</comment><comment><USER25> Do Google Censor Content on COVID 19?

If not, why are Google Search Apps still on the Apps store [1]?

Do Feed and RSS Reader get rejected as well? Along with New Publishing and Wordpress Reader which may contain COVID 19 information?

And Apple just banned EPIC games for a whole year.

I really dislike this Tim Cook's Apple. Which is in many way much worst than Steve Jobs's Apple.

I think developers needs to gather and start considering actions together.

[1] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google/id284815942](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google/id284815942)

<comment><USER26> Blaming this stuff on cook is silly. Jobs did the same kind of things. Apple is made in the image of Jobs, a control freak.

<comment><USER25> It really is a multiple of things, from Qualcomm, Politics, App Store policy. One might argue Tim Cook doesn't known about any of these as Steve would have, since Tim doesn't micro manage. But it is not the first time we caught Tim Cook flat out lying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can you just submit it again with no additional changes? As an aside, I am a pleased customer and love your app.

<comment><USER28> Definitely done that at times. It really depends on the luck of the draw with the reviewer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hide Covid-related submissions until the update has been accepted.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds a bit risky - like if Apple finds out I'll get removed from the store altogether. I guess I might not have any other option if my appeal fails...

<comment><USER30> It's not risky because it would require someone to use their brain to discover it. The types of people rejecting a link aggregator app for showing COVID posts is not using their brain; they're trying to review as many updates as quickly as possible.

"Wow I saw the word covid, into the garbage bin."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You should port it to GNU/Linux/PinePhone instead. :p

</comment><comment><USER32> We need a 7 day walkout by all major app vendors.

</comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like it's time for a PWA?

<comment> john-shaffer Apple only allows their browser engine on Apple devices and has done everything they can to make PWAs perform poorly.

<comment><USER34> Something like wipe the data completely after several days of unuse for 'privacy' reason. Who the hack would expect any software to do this?

I think the only reasom for this move is to ensure pwa is unusable even for the most simple application.

<comment><USER35> If you "install" a PWA, then that autowipe is turned off. So PWAs still work and you get enhanced privacy in Safari. That sounds like a win-win to me.

<comment> john-shaffer "It Just Works" != "It wipes your data without warning unless you perform the correct incantation"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What I find most ironic about this conversation is that it is happening inside kind of censorship observation chamber that HN mods have also created where certain words and ideas and concepts are censored and others are not permitted to see.

<comment><USER37> Your comment was killed by user flags, but I feel we should optimize for irony by unkilling it.</comment></comment>


How to Become a More Confident Person - <AUTHOR> http://www.adaptrm.com/blog/10-ways-to-become-a-more-confident-person/

<comment><USER2> Step 1: Have the right neuro chemical balance. Everything else flows from that as a consequence of confidence, not a cause of confidence.</comment>


The Memristor's Fundamental Secrets Revealed - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/the-memristors-fundamental-secrets-revealed

<comment><USER2> Oh, nearly forgotten about it. HP promise to mass produce Memristor in 2013, and then push back to 2014.

Wasn't it suppose to COMPLETELY revolutionise the way we do computing? Why haven't we heard more about it?

<comment><USER3> You should help projects in kickstarter or do ANY R&D on a company or on your own to learn something:

In real life, the time it takes to do something compared with what you planned it is at least triple.

I had experience as the responsible person of a very talented R&D team for years. My parents were also researchers all their lives.

One of the amazing things is that in the end if you persist, you get it, but it is extremely easy to abandon as progress slows down(and it always happens with anything if it is new and nobody has done it before). The main problem with researchers is that they have the tendency to start new projects and finish none.

Steve Jobs learned this early from his mentor Robert Noyce.

<comment><USER4> The planning fallacy was named in 1979, so it's not exactly news that one's inside view estimate will be optimistic. I believe the poster you are are replying to is implicitly criticizing HP for publicly claiming commercialization earlier than was ever realistic.

The people at HP who are responsible for providing timeline estimates either should know about the planning fallacy and correct for it, or they are hopelessly incompetent planners in 2013. A more realistic explanation is that they knew they were being optimistic and lied about it for the short term press benefits that they realized when they made those statements. Companies lying about their development timelines is a valid object of complaint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmmm, I left that article with the impression that the author was Dr. Gandhi was seeing what he wanted to see, not some fundamental new thing (or old thing).

When I read Dr. Chua's paper originally I also thought his reasoning for a third element was weak. In particular while it is well studied how the magnetic field and electric field interact, and essentially are analogs for the other, it is entirely _unclear_ that voltage and current are in fact in a similar relationship. Now if he had proposed a device in which its permeability to magnetic flux varied based on the current passing through it? That I could see as a resistor analog in the magnetic domain.

I agree with kken who commented that Resistive RAM is a thing, but its more of a materials properties thing than a fundamental circuit element thing.

<comment><USER6> I believe what you meant to say is that the reasoning for the _fourth_ element is weak, as the memristor is claimed to be the fourth electrical engineering component discovered, after: resistor, capacitor and inductor. Also, as HP and others have observed and further, intentionally manifested the pinches hysteresis loop indicative of memristives, I'm curious to hear why you think that his science is off?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Populistic bullshit meant to grab attention, not science.

A coherer is not a metal-metal contact.

I am too lazy to elaborate, but some people in the comment section of the article already pointed out some of the more obvious issues.</comment>


S3 Patents that Apple Violated Were Ruled Unpatentable - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/s3_patents_apple_violates_rules_unpatentable/

<comment><USER2> That's a helluva crashblossom. I can't parse the headline at all.

<comment><USER2> Aw crud, and now the headline has gone and changed, so my comment no longer makes sense.</comment></comment>


Museums, startups and accelerators… oh, my - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/02/museums-startups-and-accelerators-oh-my/ <comment><AUTHOR> How far should the intersection of the arts and tech go?</comment>


Snowden Ambassador to US?? - <AUTHOR> http://www.duffelblog.com/2017/02/ambassador-snowden/ <comment><AUTHOR> I can not find any sources for this article, and this seems to be too big of a news to not make splash, is this really true?

</comment><comment><USER2> That has to be satire

<comment><USER3> "He added that as a goodwill gesture the U.S. was strongly considering appointing Chelsea Manning as his next ambassador to Russia, in the event her planned confirmation as Deputy CIA Director falls through."

Definitely satire,;-0</comment></comment>


Show HN: I made a Pomodoro radio for coders and makers - <AUTHOR> https://pomo.chat/ <comment><USER2> Haha, love this website. If I'm coding alone it feels like being part of a group.

One point: maybe make it clear you can't post when not having a break.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks! You should get a reply from the bot when trying to post. Only the bot commands (/done, /upvote, /downvote) are available during the work sessions

<comment><USER2> You fixed it, that's fast ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love the idea for the app. There's something else that I've just noticed about your profile as a creator that's certainly captured my interest, and now I'm wondering what kind of story there can be behind it.

If you don't mind my asking, how did it happen that Barack Obama follows you on Twitter?

Again, really cool job on the app:).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think he used to follow back a lot around the time when I created my Twitter profile :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this meant to be on loudspeaker, so the whole office is beating to the same drum? I can imagine a weird scenario with a quiet office, can hear a pin drop then suddenly everyone is dancing on their desks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't thought about that use case yet

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Brilliant and fives me an incentive to actually complete a pomodoro

</comment><comment><USER6> Love it! Going to try it out at work on monday :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Ha this is great! Will try this out soon

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! let me know if i can improve it

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nifty. :)</comment>


The once-endangered vicuña is thriving in the Peruvian Andes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20180917-the-rarest-fabric-on-earth <comment><USER2> I have a Vicuna scarf and I have to say it's a luxury item I was very happy to purchase.

The scarf itself looks and feels amazing. But best of all, every item made of vicuna wool is numbered and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, that grants that the wool has been gathered in a respectful and sustainable manner.

Some may feel sad that conservation is promoted this way, but considering how the production of some luxury goods has a devastating impact on the environment, this seems like a better approach.

By the way, if Vicuna is too expensive for you, but still want a sustainable luxury item, look for Guanaco wool items.

<comment><USER3> Any chance you got it off an online store / a brand with an online presence? My roommates and I have been looking for one we can trust.

<comment><USER4> Vicuna (except from Argentina) is still CITES Annex II, which means that the export and re-export of the animal or any derivative must have a CITES certificate[1]. The Argentina vicuna is marked as Annex I (commercial export prohibited).

If the CITES DB is updated (no idea, sorry - and there's no data for 2018), in 2017 very few such trades were actually recorded[2].

I visited Peru a few years ago and there the vicuna products (retail) were accompanied by a certificate needed to get the products through customs.

[1] [https://cites.org/eng/app/index.php](https://cites.org/eng/app/index.php)

[2] [https://trade.cites.org/en/cites_trade/download/view_results...](https://trade.cites.org/en/cites_trade/download/view_results?filters%5Btime_range_start%5D=2017&filters%5Btime_range_end%5D=2018&filters%5Bexporters_ids%5D%5B%5D=228&filters%5Bimporters_ids%5D%5B%5D=all_imp&filters%5Bsources_ids%5D%5B%5D=all_sou&filters%5Bpurposes_ids%5D%5B%5D=all_pur&filters%5Bterms_ids%5D%5B%5D=all_ter&filters%5Btaxon_concepts_ids%5D%5B%5D=3436&filters%5Breset%5D=&filters%5Bselection_taxon%5D=taxonomic_cascade&web_disabled=&filters\[report_type\]=comptab)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rare to read positive news.

<comment><USER6> There is lots of positive news out there. Reforestation, garbage patch cleanup, Great Barrier Reef improvement. I've started prioritizing finding good news. Normal media channels will just get you depressed.

<comment><USER7> Yep, we are in a sustained global economic and technological boom that's been going on for decades. If it bleeds it leads is true of almost all news media, it's up to you to find good sources of information. The business news is actually a great source to prioritize as making accurate bets about the world is the most important thing to its readership.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ar-jan * vicuña.

<comment><USER8> English is such a plastic language that it even imports diacritics from other languages! Still, vicuna is also correct in English: [https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/vicuna](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/vicuna)

But I guess importing letters from different alphabets is the limit.

EDIT: Actually ñ is a letter in the Spanish alphabet, so in this case, English has imported a foreign letter.

<comment><USER9> Note, if following old Spanish orthography one could simply spell vicuna with a double "n" as in "vicunna" and remain accurate. The thing above the n in the Spanish spelling of vicuna is actually a miniature "n". So it's a sort of stacked n digraph.

<comment><USER10> That doesn't hold for modern orthography though. Two consecutive ns (e.g. in words _innato_ and _perenne_ ) are not pronounced as ñ.

<comment><USER11> Look at us arguing over English transliterated spelling rules again, as though it actually cared how much of another language's blood it spills as it hacks the raw, pulsing vocabulary out of their dictionary.

English will spell it as vicuna, vicuña, vicugna (like lasagna), vicunia, and vicunya, all at the same time, and Español will sit down and enjoy it, if it doesn't want its vowels mispronounced in an entirely new way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wtf is that design, looks horrendous on a high res display. The BBC really has lost it's way with digital design.

</comment><comment><USER13> Many comments celebrate this "good news". I hate to be the downer, and I dont want to say this article made me sad, but this is more "stopping some bad news". That's still good, and it's better than more bad news, but true good news is when we improve upon the norm, not when we stop one aspect of making things worse.

It is great when we can do things like cure diseases and genetic defects and reduce suffering, but I cant celebrate the same way when we are reducing suffering we created through sheer stupidity.

Humans cause a lot of suffering by accident, or by dint of competing with other species, and that sucks but isnt what I'm talking about. Cases where we know better and do the harmful stuff anyway are the ones that really get me. Stopping that is "good news" the way someone no longer punching me is good news.

[Edit: "computing" -> "competing"</comment>


Prefix Sum on Vulkan - <AUTHOR> https://raphlinus.github.io/gpu/2020/04/30/prefix-sum.html <comment><USER3> A couple of small comments.

1\. The single pass prefix sum the author implements is not legal Vulkan code. The algorithm requires spinning on conditions to be satisfied by concurrently running threads. This is allowed to deadlock in Vulkan and is mentioned explicitly in the "Limited Forward Progress Guarantees" section of the Vulkan Memory Model blog post linked to by the author. The only GPUs on which is it technically safe to run this algorithm are the Volta and newer NVIDIA architectures.

2\. The mask argument of the CUDA shuffle intrinsics is there, not because it is a more powerful abstraction, but because compiler technology of today is unable to prevent illegal code motion of shuffle intrinsics. There are threads on the LLVM mailing list that discuss this in some detail.

3\. I am happy to see this topic written about. Portability of compute algorithms and where APIs differ or lack is not well understood and CUDA tends to dominate the discussions. Regarding subgroup portability - I do wonder if asking developers to write their code for specific subgroup sizes and allowing them to request subgroup sizes is the correct long term abstraction. In Metal you can get a long way writing code that uses subgroup ('simdgroup' in Metal speak) functionality without actually making any assumptions about the subgroup size. It is a balance - there will always be performance to be had if you hard code such assumptions, but the more we can close the gap, the less it makes sense to do so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, especially the second paragraph. I'll probably update the post based on that (I've made several updates already).

On 1, I'm wondering if there's some confusion, especially as I don't see what difference Volta makes here. I accept that the Vulkan spec makes no guarantees about thread scheduling fairness, and that one could write an adversarial but spec-compliant implementation which schedules the atomic bump of the first workgroup to claim the first partition, then context switches to the second workgroup and attempts to run it to completion, which will deadlock.

But I think it is reasonable to make the assumption, for an extremely wide range of hardware, that when the atomic bump is scheduled, the code to compute the partition aggregate will make forward progress at least to the point where it writes that aggregate, which is all that is required for completion. Note that this all of this is about a _workgroup_ depending on the progress of another workgroup. Obviously if invocations within a workgroup were depending on the progress of other invocations within the same workgroup, that would be a problem, but of course there are control barriers for that.

I don't see how it is any more technically safe to run this on Volta than any other hardware. If there is a document that guarantees stronger forward progress than mandated by the spec, I'm unaware of it.

From my reading of the spec, there is no way to write a one-pass prefix sum that is technically guaranteed deadlock-free. I'd argue that this is a defect of the spec, as there's a gap between useful guarantees that can safely be made by all real hardware and what the spec provides. I'll allow that fixing this defect is not easy. Until then, I think a good strategy is to ignore the defect.

On 3, while I hope to avoid code duplication, so far our track record has been pretty rough. For piet-metal, I tried writing the kernel in subgroup size adaptive way, but had problems with size 64 subgroups, as that requires dealing with 64 bit ballot values, and I never got that to work (I don't have 64 bit hardware in front of me, so had to iterate by asking other people to test). Also, for Brian's work on 32x32 boolean matrix transpose, we tried a hybrid approach using both subgroups and thread local storage, and performance was really disappointing. But, armed with this experience, perhaps we can do better going forward.

<comment><USER3> On 1, you are right that _most HW_ _most of the time_ will make the requisite forward progress after the atomic bump. But Vulkan does not guarantee it and most HW doesn't either (you're just getting lucky with a high probability).

The property you're describing is discussed in [https://johnwickerson.github.io/papers/forwardprogress_concu...](https://johnwickerson.github.io/papers/forwardprogress_concur2017.pdf), page 1:10:

"After probing our zoo of GPUs with litmus tests, we determined that all GPUs had the following property: once a work-group begins executing a kernel (i.e. the work-group becomes occupant on a hardware resource), it will continue executing until it reaches the end of the kernel. We call this execution model the occupancy bound execution model, because the number of work-groups for which relative forward progress is guaranteed is bound by the hardware resources available for executing work-groups; i.e. the hardware resources determine how many work-groups can be occupant."

However, I know even that property is not true of all GPUs and thus cannot be assumed by Vulkan spec compliant code. (I actually doubt it's true of any GPU's pre-Volta - it's just that the progress needed is often a natural side- effect of switching between threads for latency hiding).

Volta does guarantee this property + more. All starvation-free algorithms are supported by the architecture. See [https://devblogs.nvidia.com/inside- volta/](https://devblogs.nvidia.com/inside-volta/). In particular, this line:

"Independent thread scheduling in Volta ensures that even if a thread T0 currently holds the lock for node A, another thread T1 in the same warp can successfully wait for the lock to become available without impeding the progress of thread T0."

Independent thread scheduling is often thought about as providing a deadlock freedom guarantee between threads in the same warp, but the same guarantees must also extend to coarse execution scopes (e.g. a workgroup waiting on another workgroup).

So, as far as Vulkan is concerned, I do not consider this a defect in the spec. I have seen this exact algorithm deployed in production and deadlock despite never having deadlocked at the developer's desk.

On 3 - sounds like another good blog post topic. It'd be interesting to hear your experience trying to (and being unable to) write shaders that are subgroup agnostic but use subgroup functionality. I should Brian's blog post on the matrix transpose as well, maybe some of that experience is documented there.

<comment><USER4> > However, I know even that property is not true of all GPUs and thus cannot > be assumed by Vulkan spec compliant code. (I actually doubt it's true of any > GPU's pre-Volta - it's just that the progress needed is often a natural > side-effect of switching between threads for latency hiding).

To be more precise. Pre-Volta GPU (like Pascal, Kepler, etc.) guarantee that once a thread block starts running on an SM it will run there to completion, i.e., its resources won't be freed until the kernel completes.

Warps of threads within a thread block are not guaranteed to run in any order, and there are no guarantees that, e.g., if warp A spins on a lock hold by warp B, that warp B will ever run and make process, and therefore the thread block might never run to completion.

Volta and later architectures guarantees forward progress in this case. That is, if a warp A spin locks on a lock held by warp B, Volta and later guarantee that warp B will make progress at some point, allowing it to release the lock so that warp A can make progress as well.

<comment><USER4> > Warps of threads within a thread block are not guaranteed to run in any > order, and there are no guarantees that, e.g., if warp A spins on a lock > hold by warp B, that warp B will ever run and make process, and therefore > the thread block might never run to completion.

FYI this is wrong, pre-Volta guarantees that all warps will run to completion, what it doesn't guarantee is the same for threads within a warp. post-Volta guarantees that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Huh, I missed the discussion in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902274) but while prefix-sum makes for a reasonable microbenchmark, I think it misses my main problem with any of the existing !CUDA attempts: ergonomics.

The Vulkan Compute attitude towards device memory _deeply_ confuses me. That is, for both OpenCL and Vulkan Compute, there is no way to say (AFAICT / at least a couple years ago): "I wish to allocate X amount of memory on this device, do not spill to the host; fail if you cannot satisfy". For most programs, it's probably a fine assumption, just like virtual memory for a regular program. But in a world where you're trying to push a system to the limit, you'd still like to say "No, I'm serious".

Raph: What's your take on the ergonomics of using Vulkan Compute? I'd hoped to see more on that given your opening of:

> Vulkan might be a viable platform, for a sufficiently persistent > implementor.

<comment><AUTHOR> My take is that ergonomics are pretty bad, there's a significant learning curve. But I'm also hopeful that it's possible to build tools that layer on top of Vulkan - unlike CUDA, which is a highly integrated toolchain and runtime, Vulkan really only targets the lower levels of the stack.

I can't speak to your memory allocation question, as I'm personally quite happy with the default behavior.

<comment><USER6> Given that CUDA has a thriving eco-system of programming languages targeting it, I fail to see how it is not possible to build tooling on top of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Before then, the mechanism for lock-free programming patterns was the > volatile qualifier and various nonstandard barrier intrinsics.

Ehhhhhh…

> The semantics of volatile were never clearly defined…

Well, the problem is that volatile _was_ defined, more or less. It means that you get load and store instructions in machine code that correspond to the appearance of loads and stores in the source code. Importantly, this does not imply _anything_ about the memory model on multiprocessor systems.

So "volatile" was never supposed to be used for threading. What you _can_ use it for is:

\- Memory-mapped I/O

\- Values that are changed in interrupts

\- Values changed on other threads on x86 if you just don't give a damn

\- longjmp/setjmp

\- Values changed on other threads on Itanium

What happens when you don't use "volatile" is that the compiler will do dead store elimination and optimize out loads. For example,

       // Global;
       int x = 0;
       void wait_for_x(void) { while (x == 0) {} }

If `x` is modified by an interrupt, it should be marked `volatile` because otherwise the compiler will helpfully optimize out the test in the loop.

What people actually did for lock-free programming in the pre-C++-11 days was to use those non-portable intrinsics or inline assembler. If someone used "volatile", it was usually out of ignorance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I want to get this right. The major point I'm trying to make is that without the Vulkan memory model, the way to get atomic loads and stores is to add the "volatile" memory qualifier to the buffer interface block. This has basically the same set of problems as using "volatile" in pre-C++11 code.

There is _definitely_ precedent for using "volatile" in multithreaded code (though, researching this, I think there may be stronger precedents in C than in C++, see [1], particularly the "In C++11, normally never use volatile for threading, only for MMIO" answer). I agree a good argument can be made that it's incorrect. To be clear, the argument that volatile is incorrect for multithreading is extremely strong from the perspective of standard C and C++, but I think in practice it was considered quite usable.

I have a feeling we agree on the substance (a memory model is a dramatic improvement over using volatile), but I can probably improve the wording.

[1]: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4557979/when-to-use- vola...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4557979/when-to-use-volatile- with-multi-threading)

ETA: Here's what I consider a great reference for the widespread use of volatile for multithreaded programming. It's from 2001, but by Andrei Alexandrescu, who I think can be considered an authority: [https://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/volatile-the-multithreaded- progr...](https://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/volatile-the-multithreaded- programmers-b/184403766)

<comment><AUTHOR> Followup: I've changed the language a bit, I hope you agree it's an improvement.

[https://github.com/raphlinus/raphlinus.github.io/commit/6b92...](https://github.com/raphlinus/raphlinus.github.io/commit/6b92d19492f8052776d84894dda000e5376d1ff1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I previously read this: [https://cachemiss.xyz/blog/parallel-reduce-and-scan- on-the-G...](https://cachemiss.xyz/blog/parallel-reduce-and-scan-on-the-GPU)

whose implementation seems a lot simpler than what is presented here.

What is the main difference here?

I've only dabbled a bit in Vulkan. (I wrote a pathtracer that I wanted to speed up using compaction; for which I needed a prefix sum)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a good blog, but only solves a much simpler version of the problem - <USER2> only computes prefix sum of a workgroup worth of data. It does not carry the sums forward from workgroup to workgroup, which is the entire point of the decoupled look-back approach.

The per-workgroup implementation in that blog is basically similar to mine, though I've put more effort into maxing out the partition size (using as many registers as available).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 16309</comment>


Human intelligence is declining according to Stanford geneticist - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/usa/news/intelligence-stanford-years-fragile-531/

<comment><USER2> The paper this article is based on is quite old already, and many problems with Crabtree's arguments have been pointed out.

Here's some reading material: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/grrlscientist/2012/nov/14/...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/grrlscientist/2012/nov/14/1)

And there's the last HN-thread with a lot of debunking going on: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4818441>

And of course, the Flynn effect completely contradicts this, mostly because the Flynn effect is actually based on data (IQ-tests in this case) and not just assumptions like Crabtree did it.

<comment><USER3> Some additional reading material: [https://plus.google.com/106808239073321070854/posts/jUGVSEg5...](https://plus.google.com/106808239073321070854/posts/jUGVSEg5RUt) comments include my criticism, link to Cochran's criticism, and link to Mitchell's criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There was literally zero stated evidence for this in the article. He mentions that intelligence is 'genetically fragile', then promotes the idea that because we don't live in hostile environments any more, that those 'fragile genetics' must be going away, and we are therefore less intelligent.

Paradoxically, though, this 'Stanford geneticist' seems to be evidence for his own findings.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is in contrast to the Flynn effect:

      The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained
      increase in intelligence test scores measured in many
      parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day

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

<comment><USER6> Hmm, so as we adapt and excel at our new surroundings we lose skills that are no longer necessary?

<comment><USER2> I know it sounds logical, but it's not proven that we loose things that are not needed. You might _randomly_ loose features, but you'll also randomly acquire features. Especially intelligence is such a complicated trait, influenced by so many factors, that randomly loosing intelligence would be based on the random loss of a lot of factors, which is in my opinion highly unlikely.

Just look at all the vestigial crap we still carry around [1]: appendix, tailbone, wisdom teeth, inside corner of the eye, etc. We don't use these yet we don't loose them. And loosing these is propably much, much easier than intelligence, because the development of things like the appendix is controlled by much fewer factors than intelligence.

[1] Which might still have a purpose that we don't know yet, for example the appendix might be important in immune response: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is- th...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-function- of-t)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anybody who feels that there may be something to this, I highly recommend the movie "Idiocracy" with Owen Wilson.

<comment><USER8> Luke Wilson.

<comment><USER7> I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A link to the article for those with access [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952512...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952512001588)

<comment><USER10> for those without access <http://ge.tt/6UxoSsY?c>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well on the bright side, this would still close the gap between artificial intelligence and human intelligence a little more.

</comment><comment><USER12> Bullshit.</comment>


The Men Who Stare At Screens (why going to the gym might not be good enough) - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/phys-ed-the-men-who-stare-at-screens/?hp <comment><USER2> This is a warning sign: "Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less."

23 hours per week vs 11 hours per week? I call this a warning sign because it screams of post-hoc analysis. Unless they then used these as pre-specified cutoffs for later studies, I would be very cautious not to overinterpret.

<comment><USER3> It's always wise to suspect that sort of data-mining, but if (as I think but am not sure) your point is that they look like arbitrary numbers, suggesting that they were chosen by the researchers to give a good-sounding result -- well, let's express them differently: "24 hours or more" versus "less than 12 hours". It sounds a lot more canonical that way :-).

... Except that, looking at the abstract (there's a link in the NYT article), I find this: "Men who reported >10 h/wk riding in a car or >23 h/wk of combined sedentary behavior had 82% and 64% greater risk of dying from CVD than those who reported <4 or <11 h/wk, respectively." [I've changed one unhelpful bit of notation.] So, looks like data mining after all.

On the other other hand, as well as those (possibly cherry-picked) thresholds there are statements like "After age adjustment, time riding in a car and combined time spent in these two sedentary behaviors were positively (P(trend) < 0.001) associated with CVD death." which suggests something less ad hoc.

<comment><USER4> From the NYTimes article:

What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting.

From the journal abstract:

In addition, high levels of physical activity were related to notably lower rates of CVD death even in the presence of high levels of sedentary behavior.

If anybody wants to look at the article, I have access to the paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It'd be interesting to see how much gym workout is equivalent in benefits to the frequent light-intensity activities recommended in the article.

There are some pretty simple ways to add extra light physical activity to your daily routine. I tend to drink a lot of water, which means I need to go fill my bottle a few times a day and walk to the washroom more often than I would otherwise.

There was also a TED talk about communities in Italy and Japan with long lifespans and lifestyles that involved lots of minor activities

<comment><AUTHOR> For me it brought to mind the discussions a few weeks ago about standing desks. Would simply working standing be sufficient?

<comment><USER6> Hmmm, except it's "common" knowledge in the waitress industry that being busy enough to have to walk around and do things frequently is _way_ better than slow days when there's lots of standing around. standing around wreaks havoc on joints and stuff.

so....if you have a standing desk maybe the point is that you walk around more, whereas when one sits one is less inclined to get up for a minute walk.

<comment><USER7> I'm finding with my standing desk that having good shoe support and a good soft carpet/pad to stand on is quite important for that very reason. It does help me to walk around more. I tend to move around quite a bit more than when I was just sitting.

<comment><USER8> Have you tried using your desk barefooted?

<comment><USER9> Might be hard in an office environment.

<comment><USER8> Depends on your company. I am alternating going barefooted and using the Vibram Fivefingers where I work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is one really large potential problem with this study: it is just a big survey. Often there is a discrepancy between what people say and what people actually do. What if many of the individuals polled simply lied, told half truths, or were mistaken about their times? It's already been proven that men lie about their incomes, why doesn't this extend to an active lifestyle as well?

For me to really take this seriously, these people need to be observed in some non-intrusive way. We do have the technology now, or so I think.

<comment><USER11> While I'm not an expert on these type of studies, I am married to one. I often see these types of criticisms bantered about, but I'm fairly certain that these researchers are MUCH more sophisticated in their controls than we give them credit for.

There is an entire body of research dedicated to ascertaining the quality and reliability of surveys, how surveys are delivered, and the conclusions that can be drawn from them. In doing these studies those methodologies are generally well understood (and clearly cited) as part of the paper itself.

While I know those of us who where educated in the 'hard' sciences (I'm a physicist by training) find it hard to buy into these... I've been quite impressed by how rigorous they really are.

I haven't read this particular study, so I may be way off base... but the fact that the fundamentals of the study involved a survey do not make it bad or invalid science (as long as the study was conducted properly that is).

<comment><USER12> This isn't about how sophisticated researchers are. The limits to research into real world human behavior are pretty much inherent in the complexity and interrelatedness of said human behavior. Doing statistics is extremely hard because behaviors and conditions correlate with a many things at once, making the causal factor very hard to isolate.

There have been a number of clever and rather specific ways in which research psychologists have gotten around these problems. But being an expert doesn't make you superman or give you unlimited bag of tricks dealing with this inherent difficulty.

One obvious way that the study might be flawed could be that the respondents were more honest about how much TV they watched than about how much working- out they did, so TV-watched actually correlated better with exercise level than claimed level of exercise (and that's just _one_ of hundreds possible problems).

IE, until we know some _specifics_ that researchers might have gotten around untruthness in research based on only survey data, we're entirely justified in being somewhat skeptical. "They're expert, they can do it" isn't enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been thinking I'd like to get a standing workstation as it might encourage me to move around more, and I believe that even just to be standing most of the time is supposed to impact positively on heart health. Something like this would be awesome (though I imagine, pricey): <http://www.amesystem.com.au/activdesk/>

<comment><USER14> I love mine and highly recommend doing it. You can do it VERY cheaply too. I went with 2 Stanley FatMax telescopic sawhorses and a door.

Non-affiliate link: [http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-11031-Telescopic-Plastic- Sawho...](http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-11031-Telescopic-Plastic- Sawhorse/dp/B000MIVTJG/)

Horribly outdated but accurate pic: [http://icecreamforeveryone.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/img_0...](http://icecreamforeveryone.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/img_0028.jpg?w=450&h=337)

I feel more creative, have more energy throughout the day and my back feels stronger.

<comment><USER15> Don't you bump your head on that low ceiling all the time?

<comment><USER14> It's an outdated pic, I quickly moved downstairs and took over our master bedroom. We sleep in the attic now.

<comment><USER16> I'm surprised that sleeping is still a group activity for you after that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why do these studies always avoid to talk about the intensity of the excercise for each subject. There's plenty of people at my gym that I've never seen sweating.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if this is because sitting and watching TV tends to correlate with poor diet (lots of snacking on unhealthy things while on the couch), whereas it's quite difficult to eat bad stuff while moving around all the time.

<comment><USER19> When I was a kid I used to skateboard around town about 8 hours a day, moving around all the time. I ate nothing but junk food during while doing this. What was I going to do, steam some brussell sprouts in the parking lot? It's more like existing in America tends to correlate with poor diet.

<comment><USER20> I found just having access to high-quality ingredients at a reasonable price to be difficult in the US. More difficult than in Europe at least & waaay more difficult than in Asia (ok, one datapoint: China).

<comment><USER21> Having lived in the US, Europe and Japan and currently living China, I'd say that yes it's very difficult in the US, but in China it's rather difficult too... For example, I find it very hard to find good quality fish to cook (most of the fish you get here have a strange test I find)...

It's easy to find organic produce here but it's not that cheap (at least compared to Europe), and I'm not exactly sure if I trust it as much as I trust organic produce in Europe or Japan...

That said from my 6 month experience living in Rochester, US is much worse... (and don't talk to me about university "food" there)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I work at Ergotron, and we are building solutions to this very problem, affordable sit/stand workstations. There are numerous studies that appear to indicate our bodies are not built to sit for prolonged periods of time. Sitting may in fact be killing us early. Check out <http://juststand.org>

</comment><comment><USER23> Do I get bonus METs if my legs never, ever, ever stop bouncing the entire time I'm at my desk?

<comment><USER9> I do remember reading that being twitchy can help you stay healthier, and lose weight. It all burns calories.

<comment><USER24> I recall another study that figured out people who are the gym who flex in the mirror all the time (hate those guys!) get more fit. That probably applies to desk jockeys as well.

<comment><USER9> Awesome. I'll pick up a mirror tonight, and start flexing into it while I work, shirtless.

I'm sure the coworkers won't mind.

<comment><USER25> Show them this study and tell them the solution is to flex in a mirror while you work. The goal is to get all of your coworkers doing this. Then you'll really have something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's satisfying to know that I've avoided wasting my time at the gym.

Instead, I go through life accepting the fact that I'll be dead by 80. I find it both motivating and relaxing. Instead of literally wasting 20% of my time at the gym, I can instead waste it in much more interesting ways: on games, programming, TV shows. I believe this will result in an overall healthier mental lifestyle. And since my body maintains a constant weight of ~215 pounds, and since I have no use for physical stamina or strong muscles, I literally have no use for the gym.

</comment><comment><USER27> Try sitting on an exercise ball. That gets you plenty of muscle contractions just balancing on it.

<comment><USER28> A Knee* Chair is another cool way to sit and always be "in movement". Due to their design, you're forced to reposition yourself every few minutes or so.

*Technically you don't sit on your knees. You sit on your bottom (bearing most of the weight), and use your shins for balance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What is it about improving health that brings out the most ridiculous concepts in fitness tool designs? This was advertised next to the article: <http://i.imgur.com/PXsxO.png>

What makes people want to spend money on tools like this when the greatest fitness tool is the human body itself?

<comment><USER9> I'm fairly sure that 90% of those wacky "exercise" ideas - like the hip-swivel chair - were created on a whim, or as a bet between two businessmen.

"Alright, we each have a month to come up with, manufacture, and advertise the most retarded exercise tool we can come up with. After six months of sales, we'll determine the winner by units shipped. Loser has to do a line of blow off the winner's genitals."

<comment><USER29> Well, that explains the Shake Weight..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Huh, maybe I should just go into the tour guide business. I'd get lots of walking around here, probably eat better, and spend less time dicking around with bullshit code. I wonder what sort of unpleasant grief annoying tourists might cause... :-)

<comment><USER31> I have no idea, but I imagine it this way. Your users are incentivised to talk to you on a regular basis. You are never going to see a tourist again. If you hate users, you will LOATHE tourists.

<comment><USER30> I like talking with people, actually. I could definitely see walking around talking for half a day - it'd be much healthier than sitting on my ass staring at crappy code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The study mentions nothing of eating habits; are we to believe each man (in 1982 no less) was eating a very healthy diet and all other factors were taken into consideration with regard to their lifestyle? For all we know they sat in front of the TV with a big bowl of ice cream, or ate a heavy meal in the evening before sitting down to relax. What about stressors, work or otherwise? Meh.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if this applies to people who have nervous energy and move around when at their desks... I've read about studies that correlate your amount of nervous energy (tapping your toes, etc.) to your likelyhood of being obese.

Maybe they're talking about movement on a different scale.

</comment><comment><USER34> This smacks of the kind of news you see on The Today Show. I wouldn't be alarmed by this, we're a pretty adaptable species. Just stay active in your free time and you'll be fine. Sheesh.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hmm... I wonder if this has any implications when it comes to school?

<comment><USER22> Absolutely it does...

1\. The sit and watch - lecture model needs to die. 2\. Students need to be given the option of sitting or standing in class and be allowed to alternate. 3\. Punishments like sitting in detention, losing recess, or timeouts, should be replaced with activities like squats, sports, running laps, or simply walking.

The wisdom of taking a hyperactive kid's recess away has always baffled me.

<comment><USER36> Yes because people have sat in desks in school only since the 1990s and we do not know whether they die earlier or not, so we must trust some study.

They have been doing it for centuries and everybody is fine!.

<comment><USER37> "Everybody is fine", huh?

I'm not sure you can make that claim so casually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _Regular workout sessions do not appear to fully undo the effects of prolonged sitting_

Well there go my health insurance rates (if I could afford insurance).

</comment><comment><USER39> So when are some hacker news hacker going to make an iPhone app that uses to the gyro to track your movements through the day?

<comment><USER40> iPhone pedometer apps: [http://www.iphoneappsfinder.com/blog/15-best- pedometer-appli...](http://www.iphoneappsfinder.com/blog/15-best-pedometer- applications-for-iphone/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Sitting all day is probably bad for you. But everything productive I do is on the computer. How do I avoid sitting?

<comment><USER42> Stand: [http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/computerworkstations/positio...](http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/computerworkstations/positions.html)

It takes a little while to get used to it, but once you're there, standing all day is just fine.

<comment><USER43> Sit AND stand: No position for a long time is ever good for you.

<comment><USER8> You can stand and work around. You do not have to stand in the same position all the time.

<comment><USER8> Oops, "walk around".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wonder if drinking green tea helps to bring you back to 'normal'..

Who knows what to make of this.. It's not easy hearing that the profession you've chosen puts you at greater risk for heart disease.

If this is true I bet it could be balanced by good diet. I also have a dog which forces me to walk for at least 1-2 hours a day.

</comment><comment><USER39> This code is hardly rocket science. It's looks more like hard manual labour. But then again, so is also probably lot's of the code at bing and google to.

      my %holidays = (
        'mlk day' => undef,
        'martin luther king day' => undef,
        'martin luther kings birthday' => undef,
        'presidents day' => undef,
        'washingtons birthday' => undef,
        'memorial day' => undef,
        'independence day' => undef,
        'labor day' => undef,
        'columbus day' => undef,
        'veteranss day' => undef,
        'thanksgiving' => undef,
        'fathers day' => undef,
        'mothers day' => undef,
        'inauguration day' => undef,
        'ash wednesday' => undef,
        'shrove tuesday' => undef,
        'groundhog day' => undef,
        'saint patricks day' => undef,
        'easter' => undef,
        'earth day' => undef,
        'arbor day' => undef,
        'cinco de mayo' => undef,
        'st patricks day' => undef,
        'flag day' => undef,
        'rosh hashanah' => undef,
        'yom kippur' => undef,
        'halloween' => undef,
        'election day' => undef,
        'hanukkah' => undef,
        );</comment>


Do you wind it up?: today's teens tackle rotary phones, FM radio and map reading - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/19/do-you-wind-it-up-teens-tackle-old-tech-rotary-phones <comment><AUTHOR> And for those into video demonstrations, there was some excellent live-TV experimentation recently:

[https://invidio.us/watch?v=updE5LVe6tg](https://invidio.us/watch?v=updE5LVe6tg)

[https://invidio.us/watch?v=Gjin8t633pc](https://invidio.us/watch?v=Gjin8t633pc)

Laughs aside, the lesson I take is that this is really about familiarity and training.

There were _entire courses_ devoted to the use of some of these things, most especially typewriters, starting with how to insert and align paper, as well as touch typing and styles in business correspondence.

Kodak produced amazing technical materials as with this 1945 manual (recently featured on HN): [https://archive.org/details/KodakReferenceHandbook](https://archive.org/details/KodakReferenceHandbook)

Phones, boomboxes, and maps were ubiquitous, the latter also covered in schools as reference materials -- how to use atlases, maps, and the like, addressed in primary & secondary schools.

</comment><comment><USER2> I worked at a high school about 5 years ago and our kids knew how to do all these things..

So, either a stupid-bomb hit the world recently, or there is some strong selection bias going on in that article..

<comment><USER3> Check this one out: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/04/24/schools- rem...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/04/24/schools-removing- analogue-clocks-exam-halls-teenagers-unable/) (Schools are removing analogue clocks from exam halls as teenagers 'cannot tell the time')</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please give me feedback on my web App (Beta) - <AUTHOR> http://premiumthemes.com/latest/

<comment><USER2> It took a while to load for me but that may be because a lot of peopel are viewing it. Over all it looks clean, its simple to use and minimalist. If I was forced to add anything I would maybe add a few more tags but thats all I can really think of. I think you've done a really good job from my angle, most of all it works on my moniton which is in portrait and not landscape. Always a bonus!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I agree the filters are pretty limited. It was a wrong design decision (the drop down are too big and thus reduced space for more filters).</comment></comment>


Realtime object identification on mobile - <AUTHOR> http://aipoly.com/ <comment><USER2> I would love to try it out. But I suppose it is iPhone only?</comment>


Show HN: Get email notifications for new products and sales on ASOS.com - <AUTHOR> https://asostracker.uk <comment><AUTHOR> This is a little side project of mine. I buy a lot of clothes from ASOS, however often forget to check for a while and end up missing sales. This site will send you an email notification whenever:

* New products launch for a certain search term

* Products within a search term change price

There is also a public listing of price changes [0] (only shows price changes for searches that members are already monitoring). I've already listed several example trackers, including one for the brand 11 Degrees [1]. Email notifications are formatted to include a preview of the product, price, and links to ASOS [2].

It also automatically detected products which have been sold out, and then relisted if more stock comes in, marking them as stale. These products are usually only available in one or two sizes, with very limited stock.

[0] [https://asostracker.uk/activity](https://asostracker.uk/activity)

[1] [https://asostracker.uk/trackers/586c1ae510426db2d3c4a817](https://asostracker.uk/trackers/586c1ae510426db2d3c4a817)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/tdi7n46.png](http://i.imgur.com/tdi7n46.png)

</comment><comment><USER2> Do you use their API?</comment>