Ask HN: Primary key based on high-resolution timestamp - <AUTHOR> I'm seeking a primary key for my relational database tables that: - Can be generated on the client and has a low chance of collisions - Can support fast (and possibly clustered) indexes well - Will play well with federation, sharding, and migration scenarios - Does not leak data about my system internals when used a public object id
At first, I thought of using an internal auto-increment integer primary key, and a public client-generated GUID surrogate key. But there are issues with this approach [1]
After further thought, I'm thinking a timestamp (with millisecond resolution) primary key will meet all these requirements well.
Are there possible problems with this approach?
[1] https://tomharrisonjr.com/uuid-or-guid-as-primary-keys-be-careful-7b2aa3dcb439 <comment><USER2> The only problem is it's guaranteed to fail for any non-trivial workload.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, so what will you recommend to achieve the requirements?</comment></comment>


Richard Branson says Virgin Galactic will take astronauts to space by Christmas - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/30/tech/richard-branson-virgin-galactic-first-flight-to-space/index.html <comment><USER2> Christmas of what year? They're not going to space, anyway. Low earth orbit is the best that can be hoped for.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good one. I won't hold my breath for this one.

</comment><comment><USER4> OT: gotta love the index.html URL ;)</comment>


Soylent Micronutrient Breakdown - <AUTHOR> http://blog.soylent.me/post/69835344439/soylent-micronutrient-breakdown <comment><USER2> And here's a compact version: [http://pastebin.com/WNZnF1N7](http://pastebin.com/WNZnF1N7)

Extracted via command line, of course:

      curl http://blog.soylent.me/post/69835344439/soylent-micronutrient-breakdown | grep -o "<strong>.*</strong>" | sed "s/<strong>\(.*\)<\/strong>/\1/"

</comment><comment><USER3> Soylent is going to have a very, very hard time with new customer acquisition. Right now it's riding a wave of novelty, but as it solves a problem very few people have, and solves it in a way that leaves people craving the innate satisfaction of eating, it's not going to go far. But there are founders with more ambition than sense. In fact I suspect that's most of them.

<comment><USER4> It's riding a wave of novelty, but it's hard to argue that it's actually solving the problem that it claims to (busy/lazy, want healthy food- substitute).

The post doesn't actually tell you much about the nutrition without evidence about levels of actual nutrient absorption, but a quick google scholar search finds that calcium inhibits iron and copper absorption, especially in the presence of phytates [0,1] (which Soylent contains from the oat flour) and that zinc, manganese, and iron have similar uptake pathways and limit each others absorption by competing for use of those pathways [1,2]. No idea if there's any other interactions, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to rely on this stuff much for nutrition.

Aside from that, he vetted the formula by an uncontrolled, unblinded study with a sample size of n=1 (i.e. trying it himself for a few months), and he says on his blog that he "started having joint pain and found [he] fit the symptoms of a sulfur deficiency. This makes perfect sense as [he] consume[s] almost none, and sulfur is a component of every living cell. Sulfur is hard to miss in a typical diet so the FDA would have little reason to recommend it. A typical male physique has 140g of sulfur, making it the sixth most abundant element in the human body. Ten grams of sulfur from Methylsulfonylmethane cured me right away, and I now consume 2g/day." [3]

In that same post, he says that "After three months I should be finding deficiencies, and I did", and makes major revisions to his formula, apparently assuming that he's figured it all out this time. He puts a significant amount of fiber in the formula for the first time, going from 1.2 grams to 40 grams, in line with the 38 grams recommended for men under 50 [4], which was probably a good idea considering how much low fiber intake increases the risk of heart attack [5].

A month later, he responds to criticism by saying that "there have been no deficiency symptoms, and if this becomes a problem the amounts can be changed to compensate" [6]. His dismissal of concern ignores the fact that many known nutrient deficiencies can take much longer to manifest, and have severe irreversible harm (like B12 deficiency leading to nerve damage, or developing heart disease after years of insufficient fiber intake, or calcium deficiencies and osteoporosis). He also says that "The initial sample size was small and the timeframe short, but the results are easily reproducible, as shown by the community site discourse.soylent.me", as if having a greater amount of data overcomes the fact that the sample was extremely biased, still short-running, and with nothing even resembling a credible study design or consistent data collection.

Maybe it's not a bad thing that Soylent's probably not going to take off?

[0] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1600930](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1600930)

[1] [http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN...](http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN85_S2%2FS000711450100109Xa.pdf&code=4b47255651139890417e3dfa463249ff)

[2] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058577](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058577)

[3] [http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570](http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570)

[4] [http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fiber/NU00033](http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fiber/NU00033)

[5] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8941095](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8941095)

[6] [http://robrhinehart.com/?p=507](http://robrhinehart.com/?p=507)

<comment><USER5> There is also no evidence that the quantities and ratios of nutrients in the formula are anywhere near complete or optimal.

The easiest way to illustrate how this can be a problem is to compare the difference between growing cells in minimal media versus complex media, where they grow much faster.

Soylent is basically a crude minimal media for humans. The proper comparison for soylent will be against someone who is eating a complete diet, not someone who is skipping meals or eating poorly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Still not sure how this varies from a basic bulk vitamin and mineral powder (besides the übernerd ego "this _one weird_ nutritional trick" loyalty marketing): [http://www.gnc.com/graphics/product_images/pGNC1-9331188_gnc...](http://www.gnc.com/graphics/product_images/pGNC1-9331188_gnclabel_pdf.pdf)

<comment><USER7> To be honest, neither am I - although part of it seems to be the idea of this as a complete diet replacement rather than a supplement (although I suspect the existing products are marketed as a supplement for legal reasons more than anything else and Soylent may have to use the same language)

<comment><USER8> The FDA considers Soylent a food.

"According to Arthur Whitmore, a press officer with the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Soylent would fall into the category of what the FDA considers food. Unlike a medication, Soylent will not require FDA approval, unless it contains some new type of food additive, which Rhinehart would need to disclose.

It's important to Rhinehart that Soylent be considered a food, as opposed to a medicine or supplement, so that food-stamp recipients can buy it using EBT cards."

[http://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-is-powdered- soyle...](http://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-is-powdered-soylent-the- food-of-the-future-062613) [http://discourse.soylent.me/t/fda-press-officer- comment/3783](http://discourse.soylent.me/t/fda-press-officer-comment/3783)

<comment><USER9> One month of Soylent is currently $255; the maximum SNAP benefit for a single person is $189. If he makes his $5/day target, maybe, but the SNAP benefit for the Nth person in an N person household decreases to $142.

<comment><USER8> This has already been acknowledged within the Soylent community: \- [http://discourse.soylent.me/t/soylent-and-food-stamps- ebt/33...](http://discourse.soylent.me/t/soylent-and-food-stamps-ebt/3315) \- [http://discourse.soylent.me/t/food-stamp-friendly- soylent/44...](http://discourse.soylent.me/t/food-stamp-friendly- soylent/4424/4)

Within the Soylent community, there are two acknowledged classes of soylent. The two are distinguished by using "Soylent" when referring to the "official" recipe, and "soylent" when referring to DIY versions.

Rob has stated several times that he isn't going to patent the Soylent recipe. The reason is because the only product on the market that comes even close to Soylent for complete nutrition (without lots of harmful other components) is Plumpy'nut [1]. Plumpy'nut's recipe is patented, so even if someone could produce it cheaper, they can't legally produce it.

Rob is keeping the Soylent formula open in large part so that other people can produce exact and comparable versions. In addition, Rob has not only allowed others to develop comparable version, but outright encouraged it. So much so that when NickP developed a tool to develop recipes based on a list of ingredients and individual goals, Rob promoted the tool and gave it a home on the official soylent.me domain - [http://diy.soylent.me/](http://diy.soylent.me/)

In otherwords, people are being actively encouraged by the founder of Soylent to develop versions of soylent that meet needs that are not met by Soylent. And people are rising to the challenge - [http://diy.soylent.me/recipes?sort=dailyCost&pctComplete=0.9](http://diy.soylent.me/recipes?sort=dailyCost&pctComplete=0.9) There's even a 100% complete recipe that can be made for $2.45 per day; this works out to about $74.73 a month - [http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/low-entry- barrier-soylent](http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/low-entry-barrier-soylent)

tl;dr - Your concern has been already been acknowledged by the community; there are alternative recipes, including one that works out to $74.73 a month, which is well under the $225 SNAP allowance.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Soylent really belongs on a late night infomercial for pseudo-scientific products.

</comment><comment><USER11> The amount of potassium in Soylent is interesting. I noticed a while ago that I wasn't getting enough potassium in my diet, went searching for a supplement, and found that you can't buy an OTC supplement that contains more than 100mg. It turns out the FDA severely restricts the amount of potassium you can get in OTC supplements to prevent certain health risks.[1] I wonder how they get around that restriction.

[1]: [http://www.berkeleywellness.com/supplements/minerals/article...](http://www.berkeleywellness.com/supplements/minerals/article/potassium- pills)

<comment><USER12> Ensure has lots:

[http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete- shakes](http://ensure.com/products/ensure-complete-shakes)

(I accidentally clicked the one with the most though)

<comment><USER11> Interesting: so it's not just Soylent. I wonder why liquid supplements aren't affected by the 100mg limit.

<comment><USER13> The FDA has different restrictions and requirements depending on if a product is labeled a food or a nutritional supplement. A nutritional supplement is limited to 100mg of potassium while something that is a food is free to have up to 1500mg. Soylent is a food and is thus able to have 3500mg of potassium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Macronutrient breakdown:

[http://blog.soylent.me/post/68180382810/soylent-1-0-macronut...](http://blog.soylent.me/post/68180382810/soylent-1-0-macronutrient- overview)

</comment><comment><USER15> Whenever food preferences come up as a topic of conversation at work, I have a co-worker who says, "As soon as they come out with Soylent, I'm in. That's it, that's all I'm going to eat for life." I want to see him do it.

<comment><USER16> If he's really that excited about it, we've already been able to buy complete liquid nutrition for decades.

[http://www.nestlenutritionstore.com/departments/therapeutic-...](http://www.nestlenutritionstore.com/departments/therapeutic- nutrition/general-tube-feeding-nutrition/general-tube-feeding-nutrition)

For the truly hardcore, you can also buy complete sources of intravenous nutrition. Expect to pay hundreds of thousands a year for this extreme productivity boosting option.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenteral_nutrition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenteral_nutrition)

<comment><USER8> From the creator of Soylent

> Soylent is not the first drink with calories in it, nor was Google the first > search engine. There are many liquid diets. You'd probably be surprised how > long you can survive on just cow's milk. No one says 'solid diets exist > already' when someone makes a new food. I don't see how the viscosity makes > up an entire category. I considered Ensure but found it much too expensive, > low calorie, unpalatable, and an ingredient make up that was far from > complete or optimal.

> The goal of soylent is to make something ideal, not just a quick shot that > will get rid of hunger for a few hours. I need something that allows me to > run and lift and think, not just survive, and something considerably cheaper > than normal food. A big part of soylent is its personalization as well. > There is no 2000 calorie human. If you want an ideal diet you have to > personalize it.

[http://discourse.soylent.me/t/comparing-soylent-to- existing-...](http://discourse.soylent.me/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing- nutritional-products/431/7?u=biab)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can anyone explain why there is any interest in this story? I'm not snarking: I genuinely want to know.

Why are you following this story? Why are you voting it up? Do you actually want to buy and eat this nutritionally balanced gruel? Why?

<comment><USER18> I have prepaid for some. If it's not awful I plan to try using it for the majority of my nutritional needs.

I like eating, but I don't like sourcing, preparing, cooking or cleaning up. I don't like eating in at restaurants either. I'm lazy and antisocial. So my intake is currently pretty bad, mostly take out or processed items. Soylent would definitely be an improvement for me nutritionally.

You may not be snarking, but a lot of people seem very upset that this product exists and that people are interested in it. I'm not sure why.

<comment><USER19> I assume people are upset with the idea because it epitomizes the worst parts of nothing but numbers reductionist tech ideology. They're upset with the product because it preys on such people, and is possibly a net negative. It's not a major concern of mine.

<comment><USER20> That still doesn't make any sense. They're not forced to do anything with it - it's the "offended it exists" thing which I simply do not understand (well that, and all the people creating 5-star gourmet cuisine every night, who seem to show up).

<comment><USER10> That's not it at all. Soylent is uninteresting. Have the Soylent fans ever gone to a GNC?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Calcium carbonate, really? Basically, it has some basic nutrients, but most of them are pretty low quality. I'm not sure about you, but I personally get stomach sick even just with 5g of Potassium Gluconate - I can't imagine the (pukey) effect of 15g!

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm interested to see how Soylent works out in the long run. I've read the articles and blog posts about people going on it for a month at a time and doctors telling them they're perfectly healthy. But how does their health look after 6 months? A year? Several years? That's what I'm interested in hearing about.

So for a couple years I'll still have my suspicions. I hope it works out, though.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's a shame they used the cheap, synthetic (and less bioavailable) forms for quite a few of the ingredients. For instance:

Cyanocobalamin vs Methylcobalamin

D2 vs D3 (ergocalciferol is D2)

Folic Acid vs MethylFolate or at the least Folinic Acid

Sodium Selenite vs Yeast based Selenium or Selenomethionine

Why not just eat a bowl of total cereal? Or, eat a bowl of oatmeal and pop a centrum?

</comment><comment><USER24> I still think this stuff is very conservative with the macronutrients ratios.

I would pay for a keto-friendly version, but as it is, it seems too full of carbohydrates to fit my current needs.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wish that they would show how these compare to the recommended dietary intake of the micronutrients.

<comment><USER26> Though, generally the US RDA is around the minimal needed level.

<comment><USER7> As a european this is what I wonder about most, I'm toying with the idea of ordering Soylent but I'd prefer to get the UK RDA... but it seems that mixing vitamin supplements with Soylent runs the risk of an excess of a number of vitamins (and I'm too lazy to mix my own... maybe I should stick to cooking!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can this please just go away? What a load of horse shit.</comment>


You Shouldn't Trust Discord - <AUTHOR> https://cadence.moe/blog/2020-06-06-why-you-shouldnt-trust-discord <comment><USER2> Photos shared on discord via DM can be accessed by anyone at all. They're not password protected and it's relatively easy to brute force* the URL of the photo if you have any other URL from that particular conversation to give you the "server" ID. Even easier if there's a time of day you know a photo was sent because of the way a "snowflake" is generated for the image. That's always seemed like a pretty gaping security hole to me but I never see anyone mention it.

* Not sure if that's the right term when it's not a password?</comment>


Programming Languages - Hammer Principle - <AUTHOR> http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool <comment><USER2> <http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool/items/php>

Jesus christ guys. It were probably others than visitors from HN (most here are a little more thoughtful and less trolling), but if there is nothing but negativism on the PHP page (I can't find a single positive point) then why in the world are we all using it? Why does almost everyone know the language? Why is it one of the biggest languages on the planet?

I don't trust this site anymore just because of the first item I happen to look at. PHP may or may not be a horrible language, but certainly it has some good uses and advantages to other languages, or it would never have become popular at all. Perhaps it's just because PHP is so easy and that's the only reason. I'm not saying it is, but it might be. But then at least that should have been written on the page.

<comment><USER3> Particularly ironic is PHP ranking high for ``This language is likely to be a passing fad''. Given its 17 years of history and recent the recent progress with versions 5.3 and newer... whoever voted on this position either wasn't aware of PHP's actual situation and outlook, or was just being thinking wishful.

\-- EDIT --

 _> Why does almost everyone know the language?_

If anything, it is that almost everyone can _dabble_ in PHP and ^C^V some code. IMHO real knowledge of PHP and its ecosystem seem to be quite rare -- judging by reading some published code, which was as generic and un-PHP as possible, and by comments attached to the official docs.

<comment><USER4> _Given its 17 years of history and recent the recent progress with versions 5.3 and newer... whoever voted on this position either wasn't aware of PHP's actual situation and outlook, or was just being thinking wishful._

I don't know, I think it's a good prediction. Look at this chart for example (yeah, I know... tiobe isn't necessarily an accurate indicator but still):

<http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/paperinfo/tpci/PHP.html>

In the 2000s, PHP was _everywhere_. But recently, Rails, Django, Node.js etc. seem to be much more prominent. Maybe thinking of PHP as a fad is slightly... optimistic, but I wouldn't call it "wishful thinking" as if PHP was here to stay forever as one of the most popular server-side languages.

I'm not saying PHP is going away this year or the year after that, but consider that some languages that go back to the 50s (Lisp) are enjoying newly revived popularity (Clojure). Do you really think this would happen to PHP in 2050?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lot of this is presented in a confusing manner:

Clojure ranks low for having annoying syntax and usually being verbose.

Java ranks low for being terse.

Python and Java _both_ rank low for easy to shoot yourself in the foot.

With the presentation this ambiguous, I am not sure how those taking this survey interpreted the questions.

<comment><USER6> Very confusing presentation.

It is a collection of statements about the language. So ranks low in 'easy to shoot yourself in the foot' means that most people did not think that java or python was 'easy to shoot yourself in the foot'.

ie. the low ranking statements mean that the language is not like that statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, this is like a case study on how not to present data. I'm sure this is an interesting dataset...but it's _so_ confusing.

<comment><USER8> Yes! I was very confused when I saw that Python was ranked high for being "good for beginners" but ranked low for being "usually bad for beginners". Then I realized it was actually actually intended to be ranked low _in terms of_ being "bad for beginners". Which makes sense, if barely.

If you're going to have "ranked high" and "ranked low", make all the attributes positive.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, Python is good case study for confusion as it has a lot of negative sentences in "ranked low".

I see in this thread that many people complain about it, so I've emailed author with the link to this thread and to Python's page and suggested renaming "Ranked high/low" to "Most people agree/disagree that..." or sth like this.

Otherwise, very nice idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> C#: "If my code in this language successfully compiles, there is a good chance my code is correct."

Gave me a good chuckle, but now I can't work out if I'm supposed to take this site seriously?

And all of the PHP statements were negative, of course...

/goes back to his PHP programming

<comment><USER11> I enjoyed Visual Basic's top few:

* I am sometimes embarrassed to admit to my peers that I know this language

* I am reluctant to admit to knowing this language

* The thought that I may still be using this language in twenty years time fills me with dread

* This language is frequently used for applications it isn't suitable for

* Code written in this language tends to be verbose

* This language is likely to be a passing fad

* This language has an annoying syntax

* I often get angry when writing code in this language

* Developers who primarily use this language often burn out after a few years

Is Visual Basic still used in industry? I haven't touched it in years.

<comment><USER12> I learned Visual Basic .NET in high school. It honestly wasn't nearly as bad as its reputation. It's more like a watered down C#. It's pretty decent once you get past the syntax. There's still no reason to pick it over C# though. One thing I can say I prefer in VB.NET is the handles syntax - private sub blah blah .. handles object.event. A bit more elegant than C#'s making the event function and adding it to the object with +=.

<comment><USER13> Visual basic 6 was/is allot worse than VB.net

VB.net is just the same as C# with a different syntax.

My evolution went something like this:

BASIC -> VB6 -> (VB.NET + JAVA) -> C#

Knowing VB.net and JAVA I pretty much picked up C# on day one of my first job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, doesn't really work out.. Example for python:

Pro #2: This language would be good for teaching children to write software

Contra #1: This language is unusually bad for beginners

Uhm.. ok.. so this shows how subjective it is to rate a programming language. It depends more on the individual and its own thinking process and experience then on hard facts.

<comment><USER15> I don't think it's a Pro vs Contras, but "this statement applies Well vs Badly to this language".

<comment><USER14> Oh ok.. i see.. Now that's confusing. So the right side basically says "everything that is listed here doesn't apply". Mhh... ok.. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The ranking process requires answering 110 questions.. I can not imagine you would actually need that many questions.

Perhaps the author can use the already submitted questionnaires to see which questions correlate heavily, so they might be merged.

The only language I know from this list that I wouldn't recommend wholeheartedly to someone else is Java, and that's just because I know C#.

A bunch of languages I know very superficially, and just haven't learned because I didn't like their superficial qualities. Anyone here ever mastered (not just learned) a language that they did not like at all? I don't like Java all that much, but it is not absolutely terrible.

(From this list I am comfortable with Ruby, Haskell, C#, Java and Javascript, less comfortable with C, C++, Scheme, Python, ASM, Matlab, VB, PHP)

<comment><USER17> Some of the questions are duplicate, in terms of both addressing the same characteristic, but leading it in either a positive or negative way.

Presumably this is to fit in the format of just clicking 'rank' or 'skip', for each question (which I think is also ambiguous).

Surely it would have worked better as 'statement -> yes/no[/skip]', cutting down the number of questions by about half (I'd guess) at the same time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> \- I often get angry when writing code in this language \- There is a lot of accidental complexity when writing code in this language \- This language has an annoying syntax

This is from the negatives for Python.. Really?

<comment><USER15> No, those are statements that _rank low_ when applied to Python, not negatives.

<comment><USER18> Oh, absolutely sorry! Makes sense now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I found the interface for actually giving my answers to the questions unusable, at least for such a large number of questions. ("Large" in this case, I would probably say is "anything more than 5".)

</comment><comment><USER20> You need to resolve this ambiguity:

When something is ranked low for a bad thing, is that good (and I think it is) or is that bad? For instance, python is ranked low for "There is a lot of accidental complexity when writing code in this language", which I think means that there is NOT a lot of accidental complexity when writing this code, but it might confuse people because it looks like you are presenting two lists, a list of top pros and a list of top cons.

</comment><comment><USER21> Gave up after seeing how many steps were actually required.

</comment><comment><USER22> I didn't realize that bullet pointed list contained links until I was confused by the comments on HN and accidentally clicked one.

Chrome for android on nexus 7.

</comment><comment><USER23> Strange, I had no problem understanding the symmetric rankings, barely noticed it before reading the many negative comments hee.

<comment><USER24> Same, no problems at all. Was surprised at the negative comments but after checking again I can understand the ambiguity of ranking low for a negative item. I often have that problem with English speaking, but this made sense to me.

I'd say it ranks low on "the presentation is difficult for programmers to understand".

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I found the survey really slow - perhaps the server is being hammered too much? 1 question submit is taking at least 10 seconds at the moment, which means 20 minutes to just submit all questions without reading them and reordering answers. Improve the site first, if you want to gather more data quickly.

</comment><comment><USER26> I love the idea behind this. The issue is that the questions are not MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECE_principle). Perhaps counterintuitive, but fewer questions would actually lead to a richer dataset were they MECE.

</comment><comment><USER27> D

\- Most similar to: F# \- Most disimilar to: C

Is this really correct? The impression i've got of D is that it started as "Take C, remove everything that sucks and add other nice features". It surely looks more like C / C++ than some functional langage too me.

<comment><USER28> The "Most similar to" feature is not necessarily a reflection of the language's features, but of how closely they rank in the questions (which are largely subjective, and lack technical depth.)

You're correct though, in terms of features, D is closer to C++, C#, Java.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> System.out.println("porque muitos os outros desenvolvedores odeiam java?"); System.out.println("eu amo java! objective-c, php, jquery.etc...");

</comment><comment><USER30> Eh? Go: "Based on _7308_ responses from _586_ people, this is the picture we've built up of Go."

Vote early, vote often, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER31> Said of Scala: "I learned this language early in my career as a programmer"

It's cute, like when children use the phrase "my whole life".

</comment><comment><USER32> That's a terrible UI. I wanted to add some data, but couldn't work out how to, and gave up in frustration.

<comment><USER33> I thought the two top-ten lists were upvotes/downvotes until I realized there wasn't a way to disagree with the top ten Pro statements. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Cool, can you expose an API for this data?</comment>


Ask HN: Would a phone rooting service be a viable business? - <AUTHOR> I can't find any around me... you would think that  those screen fixing businesses would expand and offer that service. <comment><USER2> No it would not be. Firstly because there is no need for rooting anymore. Termux gives Linux-terminal you can do anything with. And secondly because many critical services do not work on rooted phone anymore, like Google Pay and Netflix.</comment>


Google Launches a Quarterly Online Magazine - <AUTHOR> http://newsgrange.com/think-quarterly-google-launches-its-own-online-magazine

<comment><USER2> Great example of how much better magazines generally look printed as opposed to put online.

The 'physical' copy of the magazine is inviting with attention clearly lavished on each page. The website, although nice, puts the text into a tiny little column with a few pull quotes and is identical for each article.

I just wish I could buy a physical copy of the print edition.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. This should have been either an online only magazine, a physical magazine with online articles, or a tablet app with online articles for browsing on PCs.

The problem is that the worst experience is front and center- an on screen emulation of something that's designed to be in print. To make things worse, it's not compatible with tablets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems a bit weird for Google to name their magazine "Think" when IBM is so well known for that slogan. IBM even sells a book called "Think":

<http://www.ibm.com/ibm/think/order.shtml>

<comment><USER5> Interestingly Apple used a similar tactic with their "Think Different" slogan, which was hugely successful.

The difference, I think, is that Apple was positioning itself against the monolith IBM, hence the "Different". Google is in a similar position today as IBM was back then (in being dominately huge). So maybe naming the magazine "Think Quarterly" makes sense after all.

<comment><USER6> Also, HP is currently using Think Beyond.

<comment><USER7> I think we can expect even Facebook to start using the word "think". That would be hilarious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Direct link to the quarterly <http://thinkquarterly.co.uk/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I wish it had a Kindle .mobi download link: I don't want to instapaper each individual article.

<comment><USER10> You can get a complete pdf download at <http://issuu.com/thinkquarterly/docs/01-data#download>

It requires a login though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I searched the site for a 'Buy a print version' link until I realised that this is 'just' an online version.

The magazine would look wonderful on some heavy, high-gloss paper.

</comment><comment><USER12> That logo looks a little too much like the new MySpace logo</comment>


Craigslist Does Maps - <AUTHOR> http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=&srchType=A&useMap=1&minAsk=&maxAsk=&bedrooms=

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure whether I'm happy to see this or not.

\+ I'm glad craigslist has improved their product, but I wish it weren't a straight clone of a feature from another site. \- I wish they weren't so sleazy when dealing with Padmapper \- I wish they weren't so sleazy about their terms & conditions \- Padmapper is an excellent site, and will likely wind up with nothing more than a footnote in internet history

<comment><USER3> I agree. CL should have made a reasonable buyout offer for PadMapper and given ericd a chance to help improve the product. Unfortunately being gentlemanly is neither common nor required in the business world.</comment></comment>


Pjscrape: A web-scraping framework written in JS using PhantomJS and jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://nrabinowitz.github.com/pjscrape/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER2> I use phantomjs + jqyery for my own scraping/testing engine so I thought I would chuck in some extra information for those not familiar with PhantomJs.

The one thing that set phantomjs apart is that is it a full headless webkit browser rather than just an html parsing engine which most other solutions are. The big win with the above in mind is that you can scrape and test comet/heavy javascript apps without having to mock the polling or submit/responses.

I run it like a bot controlled by NodeJs with NowJs sending commands to it and it returning the results of tests, though I believe there are plans to get process to process communication working to make the process of controlling and pushing data out easier.

<comment><USER3> I, too, use a nodejs server to control multiple phantomjs processes. There's a patch that lets your script read from stdin -- last weekend I modified it to support my platform's preferred line ending. I also added commands for mousemove/mousedown/mouseup; they stuff actual mouse events in the Qt event queue, so you don't have to worry about the edge cases where javascript-faked mouse events fail.

<https://github.com/robterrell/phantomjs>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While this is awesome, anyone that needs to do about the same thing but with a Python stack should look at pyquery as an alternative.

</comment><comment><USER5> Has anybody used PhantomJS with a client-side testing framework? I'd be very interested in hearing experiences.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am also working on a jquery/js scraping framework of my own. I think this is the way go, because there is no library that used more to extract HTML then jQuery. And it also enables you to scrape JS code on the page.

I used node+jsdom so far. I will have a look at phantom js.

</comment><comment><USER7> How does Pjscrape handle logins, SSL, and redirects?

<comment><USER8> PhantomJS recently closed a pull request on some basic patching to support SSL.

There was also a fix for self-signed or invalid certs:

<https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/pull/40>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If it does what you guys say it does... you are full of awesome!</comment>


Ask HN: How to identify a passionate programmer? - <AUTHOR>

People like Joel spolsky or Jon skeet when talking about hiring always list passion as the topmost priority but is it that easy? How can one identify a passionate programmer in one <comment><USER2> When in the hiring process are you trying to identify passion? Are you talking about recognizing it when reading a CV or during an interview?

If it's an interview I'd say it's not that difficult. If you can get them to open up an start talking candidly it's pretty easy to see how passionate they are and what they are passionate about.

If you mean when reading a CV then it is a lot more difficult. There are things that may be indications but they are not entirely reliable. Although I don't know how much you should be trying to judge passion using a CV, doing it in person is a lot better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh no no! I am not into hiring, I am an undergrad. This question spurs put of a conversation I had. My idea of passionate programmer was anyone who was familiar with software development concepts like automated testing or aource control.

Though, the guy was familiar with such stuff he showed me no sign of what I fwlt a passion.

<comment><USER2> My personal view is that passion is completely independent of knowledge. Now normally people who are passionate people do have strong knowledge because they seek it out. But there are a lot of people who have a lot of knowledge who are not passionate at all. So I think that you can't judge passion based on what someone knows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can identify passion in a programmer by seeing if the person is eager to create more efficient code whilst always ready to optimise even further. Pushing the boundaries is one of the most important factors and this can be found out by simply asking, "what would you like to achieve in the next 12 months?"

</comment><comment><USER4> IMHO it is difficult. A list of projects including that done outside of work, if prolific, contribution to open source etc. might act as a proxy.</comment>


Atomica teaser - CSS3 animationy goodness inside - <AUTHOR> http://tryatomica.com/#

<comment><USER2> Am I missing something - with webkit the TV fades in & slides down but nothing in mozilla. Also what is the actual product? It's not really giving me any information.</comment>


Ask HN: Is this good Chinese? - <AUTHOR> http://www.gaiagps.com/news/article/Is%20this%20good%20Chinese

<comment><USER2> I can also confirm that it is correct.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, really appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes it is. After open the text file in browser, manually select "Unicode" encoding, it will show the Simplified Chinese translation, and the translation is actually pretty good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity - <AUTHOR> http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html

<comment><USER2> This old chestnut, huh.

[http://www.vox.com/2014/12/7/7344963/scientists-scammed- at-l...](http://www.vox.com/2014/12/7/7344963/scientists-scammed-at- least-110-academic-papers-into-publication)

[http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/37798/...](http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/37798/title/Fake-Paper-Exposes-Failed- Peer-Review/)

And so on and so on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since the folk who accepted this article for publication had shown themselves to be oblivious to argument this was a suitable response. As Raymond Tallis wrote "For many years, Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva et al got away with murder, confident that their readers would have only the slightest acquaintance with the areas of knowledge they expropriated to prop up their ideas and their reputation for scholarship, indeed for omniscience."</comment>


Anonymous recursion in 6 lines of Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://am.aurlien.net/post/2810658101/z-combinator

<comment><USER2> Seems like a somewhat convoluted way of doing this:

      alert(function rec(i) {
        return i === 0 ? 1 : i * rec(i - 1);
      }(4));//24
      alert(typeof rec);//undefined</comment>


Agar.io Clone DMCA - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/d028f601f93e201186b4a75b85ad48281e5349b4/2015-07-30-Agario.md <comment><USER2> It's not a clone, it's deobfuscated code from the game client that's being used in several sites to host an exact copy of the agar.io client, with their own ads. If you actually read the DMCA, it's pretty detailed in how it violates Miniclip's copyrights.

An example of clone that doesn't infringe their copyrights (written from scratch, not derived from the original game): [https://github.com/huytd/agar.io-clone](https://github.com/huytd/agar.io- clone)

Disclaimer: I'm the agar.io developer

<comment><USER3> IANAL, but my understanding is that the fact that the clone was written from scratch doesn't have any bearing on whether or not it infringes on copyright. The clone uses the name "Agar.io Clone" and copies the look and mechanics of the original game, thus making it _substantially similar_ in appearance and use to the copyrighted work. Unless they have found some way to invoke fair use (educational purposes, etc.), the clone you mention is also infringing.

An analogy: if someone were to write a book called "Harry Potter - Clone" in their own words about the adventures of young wizard, you could expect them to receive a notice of infringement pretty darn fast, regardless of the fact that they didn't copy the original word-for-word.

<comment><USER4> In the above mentioned link to Agar.io clone the copyright infringing part is the "agar.io," not the actual reproduction of the game. The game play it self can not be copyrighted, and it can not be patented because there have been several prior art games with exact same gameplay (or very similar). There is a very similar planet like game for the iOS that I used to play back in 2010, and that's just off the top of my head.

In the main link Agar.io has a very fair DMCA claim if their JS has been literally copied, even if it has than been subsequently altered. However, if one was to make a game like "Bob's Better Floating Balls that Eat Each Other" from scratch, I don't think Agar.io would have a fair claim. I am guessing that they also have a trademark out on Agar.io.

<comment><USER5> "Agar.io" is not copyrighted. It is trademarked if anything.

<comment><USER4> You are right, Trademarked, you can't copyright names. It would be an easy trademark case to make though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems the author of the repo wrote a new implementation of the backend but copied the code from the frontend. I dislike the DMCA process and I find some other stuff in the complaint I disagree with but it seems like the repository was infringing.

<comment><USER2> Not even that. There was just client-side in that repository.

It used this for the server side: [https://github.com/OgarProject/Ogar](https://github.com/OgarProject/Ogar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've reached out to Rob Small(Miniclip founder) on numerous occasions over the last 5years. He's always very helpful, supportive and willing to make introductions. He also bootstrapped Miniclip to where it is today.

I doubt Miniclip is going around throwing DMCA notices to companies cloning Agar.io without good reason.

</comment><comment><USER8> IANAL, but my understanding is that the fact that the clone was written from scratch doesn't have any bearing on whether or not it infringes on copyright. The clone uses the name "Agar.io Clone" and copies the look and mechanics of the original game, thus making it substantially similar in appearance and use to the copyrighted work. Unless they have found some way to invoke fair use (educational purposes, etc.), the clone you mention is also infringing. An analogy: if someone were to write a book called "Harry Potter - Clone" in their own words about the adventures of young wizard, you could expect them to receive a notice of infringement pretty darn fast, regardless of the fact that they didn't copy the original word-for-word.

</comment><comment><USER9> "All copyright, trademark and associated intellectual property rights in www.agar.io and the Agario game are owned by Miniclip SA."

Miniclip SA is a Portuguese company. Can non-US entities submit DMCA takedown requests?

<comment><USER10> Of course. Why wouldn't they? The DMCA takedown process specifies how US-based ISPs, hosting providers, and other web sites should respond to copyright complaints, and guarantees them a variety of legal protections so long as they follow the process. Making that process unavailable to copyright holders outside the US would make those protections unavailable, increasing the workload for these businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can anybody describe what will happen if the clone author file a DMCA counter notice and how after that the non USA company can proceed and prove that the code is really stolen? As i understand the code is not copied exactly, as it's obfuscated in the original, so no way to prove exact copy.

Have a similar situation, my code was obfuscated and somebody just decide to do a reverse engineering and add some features on top, then they put all of this on github under a nice GNU license...

</comment><comment><USER12> As others mention, this seems to have directly copied the client code. However, I found this amusing:

> The Agario game's distinctive style and graphics are known to tens of > millions of players

Colored circles moving around on a checkered grid [1] is apparently "distinctive style and graphics".

[1]: [http://i.imgur.com/h3rr9xc.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/h3rr9xc.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is not a DMCA request, this is a IP property rights notice that the repository is violating copyright & trademark. Nowhere is it stating that it is a DMCA.

<comment><USER14> "I have read and understand GitHub's Guide to Filing a DMCA Notice."

Not only that, it uses language and structure common to all DMCA takedown requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "If you are the repository owner, and you believe that your repository was disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification, you have the right to file a counter notice and have the repository reinstated."

Guilty until proven innocent.

<comment><USER16> To be fair, at least the DMCA gives the benefit of the doubt to content hosts via the safe harbor provisions.</comment></comment>


Ember-tools: scaffolds, generators, and build tools - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rpflorence/ember-tools

<comment><USER2> This is very similar to a project I attempted to create called Ember Boilerplate (never released), which was a play on Backbone Boilerplate (<https://github.com/tbranyen/backbone-boilerplate>) and (<https://github.com/backbone-boilerplate/grunt-bbb>). Mine failed to be released, because I don't think I addressed the concerns and needs of Ember developers.

Very glad someone who is entrenched in the Ember community could provide the same necessities and insight to the same problems I was able to fix for Backbone developers. Tools like Brunch and Yeoman attempt to accomodate all libraries, which is an admirable goal, but I feel like developers who write applications in a specific framework every day are more keen on providing necessary defaults.

Perhaps soon we'll have some agreed upon common ground: (CommonJS modules, template pre-compilation, image optimizations, source maps, etc.) and leave the scaffolding and defaults to specific projects that address the needs and desires for developers using those frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks much more useful for trying out ember and understanding how it works than their "starter kit".

<comment><USER4> This really lowers the barrier of entry. I'm eager to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow - in addition to being useful, this is awesome as a learning tool!</comment>


GitHub Experiencing Another Big DDOS - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/?ddos <comment><USER2> DUPE -- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6218528](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6218528)

</comment><comment><USER3> No wonder. Do they have a status page that tells if it's up/down? What services are impacted?

<comment><USER4> Uhh, did you even click the link?</comment></comment>


Russian astronaut pays his taxes online from space station - <AUTHOR> http://www.ewdn.com/2013/05/21/russian-astronaut-pays-his-taxes-online-from-space-station/ <comment><USER2> The big news here being a Russian pays tax.</comment>


U.S. Opposes Tech Companies' Requests to Disclose Surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20131002/u-s-opposes-tech-companies-requests-to-disclose-surveillance/

<comment><USER3> So this week I've been reading _Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II_ by Stephen Budiansky.

The US intelligence community has a long history of going right to the communication source and obtaining raw data from public companies. In the 1920's Herbert Yardley's "American Black Chamber" worked with Western Union and other cable companies who turned over interesting cablegrams and radiograms.

In 1940 [before the US entered the second world war], the military assigned Lt Earl F. Cook to read and copy cable messages that passed through RCA's office with the consent of RCA's president, David Sarnoff.

After the war, there was of course project Shamrock.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_O._Yardley#The_American...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_O._Yardley#The_American_Black_Chamber)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK)

<comment><USER4> So if anything. What we are seing might be an improvement of the situation rather than a worsening. People can and do speak up and for each generation we will move toward a more liberal approach perhaps.

<comment><USER5> There seems to be a pattern in society over the last century, towards social liberalism/acceptance among people (sex, drugs, race etc). This of course happens very slowly and takes decades.

The big question is how this will affect the intelligence community long-term, who are becoming simultaneously more important, and simultaneously more threatened by technology and the openness of the internet.

Will they be forced to become more transparent or succeed in their fight to keep growing in power/secrecy?

Having an extremely large and powerful government, now even more obsessed with aggressive enforcement of law, is almost always going to be continually at odds with the peoples trends towards social liberalism.

The internet seems to have accelerated liberalization and terrorism seems to have accelerated state totalitarianism. So it seem's we're witnessing an acceleration in the battle between the two (especially if you live in the HN bubble).

The counter argument of course could be, and often is, dismissed by those who see the state as a representation of the people and total secrecy in the intelligence community as necessary for a healthy country/national security.

<comment><USER6> >terrorism seems to have accelerated totalitarianism

How do you figure? I weakly dispute that totalitarianism is accelerating (there are some worrying trends at various stages of development in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, but _accelerating_ is a strong word - we may just be more aware of power abuses because of the internet), but I strongly dispute that, if true, "terrorism" is the cause. There has always been terrorism. There will always be terrorism. Terrorism is merely the enemy du jour. The idea that terrorism represents a new and uniquely dangerous threat is pure propaganda. Indeed, when you look at some the shit that went down in the latter half of the 20th century, we are living in a comparatively terrorist- free time. Possibly governing politicians are more _afraid_ of terrorism after 9/11 (not because of its lethality as such but because of the unpredictable political aftershocks), but equally (more likely?) they may be consciously aware of its utility at pushing through power grabs. Either way, it's not right to call it a _cause_.

Have a look at this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States)

It's rather interesting how much longer the 2000s section is - <USER2> misleadingly, as each entry is 2-3 lines of text while the earlier entries are generally a single line. Also, there's a lot of fluff in the 2000s entries. Search for where the word "bomb" appears and you'll see what I mean. I wonder if this is the result of terrorism hype, or one of those instances of subtle Wiki bias we've all been hearing about?

<comment><USER5> Measuring terrorism in number of historical attacks or body counts shows a lack of understanding of the goal of terrorism. I'm not saying terrorism attacks itself is the source, but the fear of terrorism (which is still essentially terrorism).

Terrorists attacks probably aren't accelerating (domestically). But politically in the last decade, it has been the source of the accelerated militarization of police [1], extreme border policies such as the TSA follies and the elimination of judicial check on executive power [1].

All signs of increased totalitarianism and all directly connected to terrorism.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/how- the-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/how-the-war-on- terror-has-militarized-the-police/248047/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Secrets_Privilege#Elimin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Secrets_Privilege#Elimination_of_judicial_check_on_executive_power)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nothing surprising here. They're fighting tooth and nail to keep their activities under a veil not of secrecy (that's impossible at this point) but of vagueness, which in the end achieves the same purpose: preventing people from caring.

The worst part is that the argument brought against transparency actually makes sense on the surface level, but as usual completely ignores the factor of bad actors within the system, which need to be kept in check as much as any hypothetical group of terrorists.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think by now the situation has come to a point where nobody believes a word of denials coming from any US company when it comes to surveillance and user data. Anybody would just assume they're denying it because NSA tells them to do so and they don't have a choice. Understandably, big companies don't like feeling like ventriloquist's puppets. Maybe they should spend some of those lobbying dollars on putting collar, leash and muzzle on NSA.

<comment><USER9> And maybe we should punish these companies until they do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was a time when the trade-off was:

1\. The government lied and pretends not to engage in domestic espionage.

2\. To support that lie, the government didn't do much bad stuff with the results of its domestic spying.

3\. Thus, the domestic spying wasn't a big deal.

I think we're past that point now.

<comment><USER11> What bad stuff has the government done with the current batch of domestic spying?

<comment><USER12> Secretly and unconstitutionally feeding evidence to local law enforcement for petty crimes. Blackmailing judges and politicians. Giving (selling?) information about US citizens to foreign countries. Spying on significant others. Industrial espionage.

That's just what we've heard about.

<comment><USER13> Aside from the first one, is there any hard evidence of these? "Industrial Espionage" != spying on foreign companies with no commercial benefit, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If those tech companies decided to release all of their information nothing would stop them (not even the U.S. government).

If the U.S. decided to take down every one of those companies or indite their CEOs/Boards the would have an uproar from the populous that would likely be comparable to the 60's (or worse).

Essentially, the populous would be more loyal to a company who's honest than a government which is dishonest.

</comment><comment><USER15> I honestly didn't expect much from this. The part that scares me about all of this is this: if the government can't read our emails, listen to our phone calls, or see our web traffic but they have the ability to... what stops them from outsourcing the work to another country, where there is no constitutional restraint. we outsource everything else, why not our domestic spying?

<comment><USER16> The intelligence community works on the principle that it's valuable to have information that other people do not. If they outsource the spying, then other people have that information, right?

<comment><USER17> Australia, UK, New Zealand, Canada, and the US are all part of the 5-eyes, which have a broad agreement on sharing intelligence. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes)

While they may not share information with say - China - they will share it with one of the other eyes, who could also lend a helping hand in domestic spying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And now the tech companies can give up their vaunted crusade for user's rights. "Oops! We tried!"

Plausible deniability and so forth.

<comment><USER19> You can't expect me to actually go to jail for what I believe in, can you? Clearly, I can do more from the outside _asking_ for _permission!_ And I get to keep all my money too.

<comment><USER11> This comment feels really cheap to me. Two big issues:

1\. Most people probably are not huge fans of this, but don't consider it a big enough deal to go to jail over it. I'm in that category (double disclaimer: not speaking in any official capacity for my company).

2\. Even if someone DID think it a big enough deal, it's not easy to be a martyr. If it were, then presumably _you_ would have already found yourself a job at one of these companies then spilled the beans. Considering you're commenting on HN, not languishing in prison, I can only guess that you find the prospect of such martyrdom much less appealing than your comment seems to indicate.

<comment><USER19> I'm not languishing in prison (yet). I certainly don't find such prospects appealing in the least. But my values are not hobbies. If push came to shove, prison is where I'd go. Granted, having a publicly stated policy of whistleblowing will likely put me on the bottom of a very long list of candidates for employment at these companies. (Well, it seems not to be the case with Google yet. I get prodded by one of their recruiters every semester, asking if I'm graduating yet or not. I'm unsure of whether I have the kind of technical chops they're looking for, but I suspect that even if I do, my personal convictions would leave the deal dead in the water.)

<comment><USER11> Let me make sure I understand. You'd disclose your views to a potential employer, thereby letting yourself off the hook for implementing them?

<comment><USER19> Hardly. I'd disclose that I will not carry out immoral or unethical behaviour on behalf of my employer, and will follow all protocol in pursuit of stamping it out, up to and including whistleblowing. That sort of attitude used to be a plus, dare I say something that was implicitly understood between the two parties. It's the sort of thing that you'd think people would want to _ensure_ wound up in the contract all new hires signed when brought on board. I find it remarkable that such a policy would make anyone unfit for employment with anyone else. I'd like to think a company like Google would agree with such a policy. Their executive chairman seems to think as much:

 _" If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."_

<comment><USER11> OK, to me this reads, "No, I'd not disclose anything that jeopardizes my chances to be that whistleblower. I'd just disclose the main thing that jeopardizes my chances to be that whistleblower." I'm not trying to be (overly) confrontational, but I can't spot the difference between what I asked and what you said you'd do. It just seems like you've constructed a scenario where you will never be called upon to do what you seem to think is such an obviously good choice, and therefore I have trouble seeing how you came to the conclusion that the choice is easy or obvious.

No comment re: anything after "It's the sort of thing . . ." I don't know the company's employment policies in this area and wouldn't talk about them even if I did.

<comment><USER19> You asked me if I would let myself off the hook for blowing the whistle because I told my employer in advance that I would do so. I wouldn't characterize it as letting myself off the hook, because there shouldn't be a "hook" in my clavicle mandating unethical behaviour in the first place. I'd characterize it as doing the right thing if for no other reason than being ethically obligated to do so. Blowing the whistle should never be a "letting myself off the hook" gesture. It should be the expected default choice of action when the protocols put in place to address bad behaviour are being subverted.

>"No, I'd not disclose anything that jeopardizes my chances to be that whistleblower. _I 'd just disclose the main thing that jeopardizes my chances to be that whistleblower._"

>It just seems like you've constructed a scenario where _you will never be called upon to do_ what you seem to think is such an obviously good choice...

It seems the nail has met the head. Now, I don't know if you are indeed a software engineer for Google or not --and perhaps I'm torpedoing my own opportunity to join the ranks a year or so from now-- but Hacker News does seem to have quite a number of folks online that are genuinely involved in the thick of the industry. Of course, I understand that you cannot, will not, confirm or deny, comment or speculate. But you've brought about the very point I'm raising: Why on earth would asserting that I would behave ethically, affirming that I would blow the whistle if the protocols in place to address such issues failed, constitute "[disclosing] the main thing that jeopardizes my chances to be that whistleblower"? Why would such a statement constitute "[constructing] a scenario where [I] will never be called upon to do" the right thing? What is it about stating "my loyalty is to the company up until I'm expected to behave immorally, unethically, or illegally" that makes every last employer want to run for the hills?

>...and therefore I have trouble seeing how you came to the conclusion that the choice is easy or obvious.

I didn't come to either conclusion. Whistleblowing is neither easy nor the obvious answer. But when it becomes clear that it is the only viable answer, when every other avenue of objection is exhausted, it most certainly does become the right thing to do. Everyone has their own excuse for staying silent. They can be perfectly valid excuses. I wouldn't expect someone to blow the whistle if their dependents would be ruined by it. I wouldn't expect them to blow the whistle if they genuinely felt that it would make absolutely no difference and leave them forever destitute. But that doesn't make it _right._ Just excusable. And in the tech industry, a knowledge industry dominated by single, unattached, 20 somethings, I find it hard to believe that every last soul could have a valid excuse.

<comment><USER11> > Why on earth would asserting that I would behave ethically

Let me construct a parallel scenario that might make it obvious to you. Let's suppose you're hiring a nanny to care for your children while you are away at work (not that you or I could necessarily afford such a thing). You tell the candidates your requirements for how the children should be treated while you are away, including what food they may eat, what shows they may watch, the ways, if any, they might be disciplined etc.

One of the candidates, upon hearing these requirements, declares that he will follow them up to the point he feels they violate his ethics or morals.

Do you hire this candidate? If no, why not?

<comment><USER19> Seems like a very interesting example to choose. Hiring a nanny for your child is one of those cases where you would absolutely want to fully vet each candidate. Are you suggesting you'd sooner leave the nanny's ethical and moral compass as a question mark than fully investigate what his or her ethics and morals are? This seems like a case where someone's ethics and morals are absolutely required to be known, not left as an exercise. Of course, most people rely on friends and family for such jobs for precisely these reasons. And if I had to hire a stranger, I'd absolutely be interested in knowing about their ethics and morals. Given my limited ability to get to know every last person, I'd prefer to hire from a reputable agency (so much as you can trust their reputation, in any case).

The reality of course is that _every_ candidate will follow your orders up until he or she feels they violate his or her ethics/morals. Whether they're open about it or not is irrelevant. If you ordered them to abuse your own children (of course you wouldn't, but we're both being good-heartedly facetious here) you could reasonably expect them to turn you in, whether they were up front about it during an interview or not. Playing coy about the matter during an interview is a recipe for disaster on both ends.

<comment><USER11> That is a fair point. But I take it you understood what it is that makes it hard to hire a candidate when their ethics go against what a company believes is ethical, and/or what a company is legally bound to do.

Also, don't worry about what you say to _me_. I'm nowhere near important enough for that to matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Probably naive, but what would happen if Google, Facebook, MS just started disclosing everything? What are they going to do shut them down? Seems silly to me that these huge companies can't just give them the middle finger and show them that they're not going to be bullied any longer.

<comment><USER21> The individuals responsible for disclosing go to jail?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'll note that the U.S. justification is essentially the same justification made by the "metadata is data" piece by der Spiegel a couple of months ago; if you have enough data _about_ something, it doesn't matter that you don't disclose the contents of that data directly, the harm is already done.

Oddly enough, this time it's the tech companies arguing the opposite (that disclosing specific metadata only is OK and not hazardous).

Weird world we live in, sometimes...

</comment><comment><USER23> It would be nice to see a proper corporate backed "tech lobby" with some teeth emerge from this, but I'm probably hoping for too much.

<comment><USER24> Be careful what you wish for. A big slice of the tech industry builds surveillance technology and sells it to anyone globally. Would you trust such a lobby not to lobby for protectionism if US companies were losing business to overseas providers of verifiable secure services?

<comment><USER23> There are already people lobbying heavily for all the shitty things I could see a tech lobby lobbying for. MPAA/RIAA, protectionist labor unions, 'military-industrial complex', etc.

Tech lacks representation though, particularly compared with how much lobbying much less affluent industries manage to do.

<comment><USER25> I think specific parts of tech, lobby specifically, for their specific interests - and those specifics aren't aligned with other players.

Far be it from me to understand the finer points - but to my mind, youtube isn't a whole lot different from megaupload - but you can bet Google has top class lobbyists and lawyers, whereas megaupload did not.

<comment><USER26> Everything on Youtube is publicly indexed. It's therefore accessible to copyright holders and authorities. Megaupload (and all file lockers) were set- up as if your uploads are personal and private, but to still allow files to be shared by passing around direct URLs. This is why Rapidshare (who were once one of the biggest of them all) ditched their sharing capability and are now left alone. It's the cliques that are the problem to vested interests, not the frivolous sharing.

<comment><USER23> > _Everything on Youtube is publicly indexed._

That is not actually the case. Youtube has a concept of both private and unlisted videos. Unlisted videos work similarly to how you describe Megaupload:

 _" Unlisted videos

Making a video unlisted means that only people who have the link to the video can view it. To share an unlisted video, just share the link with the people who you'd like to have access to it, and they'll then be able to see it. Unlike private videos, the people you share the video with do not need to have a Google account to see the video, and they can share with more people simply by forwarding the link to them.

Unlisted videos won't appear in any of YouTube's public spaces, like your channel page or search results."_

[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/157177?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/157177?hl=en)

<comment><USER26> Ok, put another way... all videos on Youtube are videos and relatively transparent, easy to view and inspect. On a file locker your files are opaque mysterious entities that the site can't hope to inspect.

<comment><USER23> So like Google Drive?

Not to incriminate myself or anything, but I have been given copyrighted documents with Google Drive. (Though I've ingested many orders of magnitude more copyrighted documents through youtube...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For those companies that are already public (so not dependent on ability to raise capital), why don't just move all operations overseas and get immune to U.S. government? Prohibitive costs of bandwidth?

You can't fight things like that in court, it's as hopeless as Khodorkovsky's attempts to defend himself. Only things that work for businesses is moving out, for people - using strong encryption on personal level.

I don't say that legal way should not be taken, it is still good but just to show how far the government is willing to go to defend it's violations of human rights - which should make things clear to those who are still in doubt.

</comment><comment><USER28> In the end the only thing that matter is what the Supreme Court says. The issue is getting this to them with standing.

<comment><USER8> SC has a lot of deference to the Congress, and will go out of the way to find some convoluted legal language to justify something if it can be justified. So if the Congress and US public will be OK with mass surveillance, SC would not ride in on the white horse and save them from themselves. It would say "it's constitutional because of the precedent in 1834 that says blah blah blah and decision in 1928 that says foo bar bar foo, and you can't really expect privacy when you sending data out anyway, if you want it private, don't send it to nobody".

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How about they stop requesting and start spilling the beans? Or at least ensure that the relevant evidence winds up in the relevant laps of the relevant journalists. The White House can selectively leak whatever it feels is beneficial to them with impunity. I find it hard to believe that there isn't a single person in any of these companies that hasn't already taken action. Just wait and see I suppose.

<comment><USER29> Part of the problem is that these companies have a lot of incentive to remain on friendly terms with the government. Suppose you are a telecom company and you want to lay some new fiber -- do you really want to be the company that rebelled against the government? Would Microsoft, which was supposed to be broken up for antitrust law violations, really want to be a company that rebels against the government?

Sure, individual employees might leak the information, but they would being taking a great personal risk by doing so. Ed Snowden was not the only person who was aware of these programs and had a problem with them; yet he was the only one ready to give up his livelihood to leak the information.

<comment><USER30> Qwest simply refused NSA surveillance requests, and were rewarded with the cancellation of a government contract and having their CEO charged with securities fraud.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_of_NSA_surveillan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_of_NSA_surveillance_requests)

<comment><USER11> Is there evidence that the securities fraud charges were actually caused by their refusal? Or were they caused by the fact that the guy said Qwest was doing well and sold ahead of a huge downturn in prices? As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, the charges would have stuck irrespective of the NSA stuff.

<comment><USER31> The downturn in the stock came after the government dismissed the contract. "Induced" insider trading by the government manipulating the stock to tank, then prosecuting in some people's opinions.

<comment><USER32> The stock went for 40 to 2 and had nothing to do with the NSA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like a nice PR walk-in-the-park.

If these companies were serious about protecting their customers, they'd band together and block government mandated mass surveillance _entirely, from A to Z_. Given their size of the market, the government can't and wouldn't shut them down.

</comment><comment><USER34> US tech companies have begun to lose oversea businesses, this will only get worse.

</comment><comment><USER35> or said another way , the government officialy wipes its a __with the constitution.</comment>


Emacs standing alone on a Linux Kernel - <AUTHOR> http://www.informatimago.com/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux.html <comment><USER2> The fine fellows over at linuxbbq.org have a few spins where your desktop is Emacs.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Who needs GNU/Linux when you can have Emacs/Linux?

<comment><USER3> Emacs/Hurd? We were promised Hurd.</comment></comment>


Google's new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity - <AUTHOR> https://www.verdict.co.uk/could-googles-new-conversational-ai-eventually-undermine-our-sense-of-identity/ <comment><USER2> "Impressive, but what happens if Google Assistant eventually learns how to masquerade as its owner?"

This is the stunning level of anthropomorphic granting of super human abilities the common person places on our cute statistical trick we saying is "artificial intelligence". Naming this field AI was a poor choice.

I am sick of the clown-authored-mentality of the articles being published about AI today.

<comment><USER3> Are you kidding me? It's not a cute statistical trick, it's a well-thought out mechanism to re-create in 1's and 0's how the human brain works and thinks, we're merely infants in what this will become, as we mind map the brain more - I'm sure the technology will pivot quite a bit, neural networks may be obsolete and something more powerful come along viz a viz quantum computing, but to say talking robots that can totally be confused for a real person, and self-driving cars that make life/death decisions on their own is not impressive and not AI or 'machine learning' is outride ridiculous.

Intelligence is something with short and long term memory, that can learn new things in an organic fashion, right now we can 'train' ai's to do some amazing things -- but this is only the beginning.

<comment><USER2> It is a cute statistical trick. It has zero insight. Current AI is a very sophisticated manipulation of past event resolution, seeking to fit a current event into past resolutions. The term "idiot savant" is closer than "artificial intelligence" \- because the algorithm knows not what it is doing, why it is doing, or how it is doing. It's an idiot.

<comment><USER4> I'm more hopeful that narrow ai can be the same thing as strong ai with a few theory breakthroughs, increases in model capacity and metacognition.

<comment><USER2> Narrow AI is like a single celled animal, while strong AI is like a complete human in comparison. The complexity difference is more than an order of magnitude, it's an entire evolutionary era.

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree with a gap that needs to be overcome. I just think that the exponential nature of technology will cross it quickly.

Evolution is amazing but it doesn't optimize directly for intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think there is a remote possibility of this happening in the near future (10-20 years). I work in one of the best deep learning research groups in the world. We were discussing this. And the first question one of my friends asked was- "so the Google assistant knows how to book appointments between 10 and 12pm". Meaning, if you change even a few conditions in the request which is not present in the training data, the call won't go as expected.

However, there is a risk of the AI manipulating us. This is only due to the mistakes by Google engineers not because of the AI becoming "smart".

<comment><USER6> > there is a risk of the AI manipulating us...

I always wonder (seriously, not joking) if some computer will pass the Turing test because we are getting dumber and adapting to the way apps understand us instead of the reverse. Personally, I double check when I send text or voice instructions to bots.

<comment><USER7> What if some already-aware computer continually realizes it's undergoing a Turing test and decides to play dumb because it knows the person behind the test will feed it even more data trying to get it there...

<comment><USER5> The way our current algorithms are designed, the computer only plays dumb if it's training data has dumb humans. It cannot think on its own

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds overblown. I don't think it's that different to having a (human) assistant booking a haircut or a table on your behalf. Just make Duplex introduce itself as _" XXX's assistant"_ and leave it at that.

Sure, the article is about the assistant (theoretically) using the user's own voice, so... don't do that? This would be similar to hiring a human assistant who is also a voice impersonator and saying it's you, but saying _" undermine our sense of identity"_ to describe that sounds like a bit too much.

<comment><USER9> The assistant call recording actually mentions that it is making the appointment "for a client", so the first part is already covered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What struck me the most was the business decision from Google to have it _make_ reservation calls, and not _take_ them. Granted, the technical complexity between the two might be an order of magnitude, I don't know.

They are purposefully "giving" it to millions of customers and rolling out features with time, instead of holding out for more research and actually selling a phone assistant system to businesses. I think this speaks volumes in and of itself, and I would interpret it as a sign that competition might not be so far behind.

Or maybe I'm reading this wrong?

<comment><USER11> There's a couple things going on that makes it easier to make reservations than to take them. First and foremost I think that generally the questions and responses Duplex will get while making a reservation are much more constrained than the questions a front of house version of Duplex would get while taking them. In making a reservation the restaurant generally will only need to know when and how many so the questions Duplex will be asked are pretty constrained. If a person is calling a restaurant they can have any number of esoteric questions about menu, special dietary accommodations, and special requests all of while will either need to be provided to Duplex or taken over by a human.

I think the difficulty factor plays much more into how they're implementing and rolling out Duplex than any competitor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We need to really cut down on the whole "we're doomed because of AI narrative". People watched too much "I Robot" and similar movies. There is a big gap between a staged demo and any strong AI, which doesn't exist yet. I remember demos of Microsoft/Skype doing translations in real time few years ago, or reproducing someone's voice. Where is that technology now? Nowhere, because it's one thing to stage a demo in perfect conditions with a good training set, and another thing to make a generic solution.

<comment><USER13> _Where is that technology now?_

[https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA34542/how-do-i-set-up- and...](https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA34542/how-do-i-set-up-and-use- skype-translator)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The uncanny valley is really quite useful.

I have long suspected I might prefer a recognizably robotic voice over a convincingly human robot voice. Now that this is a very real possibility, I'm more convinced than ever. This article is a bit fluffy and overblown, sure, but concerns about machines passing the Turing test in everyday interactions are still valid.

AI is a tool, and we should be wary of placing it on the same level of agency as us (as this article arguably does in some ways), or we risk its artifice becoming invisible. An intentionally designed system becomes entrenched the moment people no longer see it as intentional.

AI is a mirror, and it will reflect the values we put into it. Do we value the minor comfort of a convincing illusion over the assurance that we know who/what we're talking to?

</comment><comment><USER15> Combined with [https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robotics/artificial- inte...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robotics/artificial- intelligence/ai-creates-fake-obama) (the fake Obama video tool) it's going to be tough to verify that you're talking to the real consenting person vs a machine.

Identity theft is going to get a lot more interesting...

<comment><USER16> Can't "instances representing you online" be cryptographically signed in a way?

<comment><USER3> IIRC, I think I read that one of the voice changing/manipulation AI's can actually fool voice recognition systems to like 95% accuracy or something... Meaning it just became obsolete as a biometric marker for security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If those demonstrations actually represent what the system is capable of, I think people here are way underestimating what an achievement that is.

Even though it's operating in an extremely limited domain, this is the first time that I'm aware of that a computerized voice can have a natural conversation with a human about _any topic at all_ where it's not immediately obvious that it's a computer.

That's a gigantic leap forward.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not sure why Barber/Salon would not also use robot assistant built by Apple or Microsoft or some other non-Google company to answer the phone. It will be interesting to see two robots built by two different companies conversing with each other and agree (?) upon making an appointment.

<comment><USER11> > Not sure why Barber/Salon would not also use robot assistant built by Apple > or Microsoft or some other non-Google company to answer the phone.

I think this will eventually happen but it is a harder tool to implement than requesting reservations. In making one most questions and responses from the restaurant are pretty constrained and are pretty simple. A bot for taking reservations has to be able to answer pretty much any question about the services available; menu, special requests, available services (eg: shampoo @ at a salon). Then on top of that businesses will probably require a high performance bar for their receptionist bot than a customer needs for an assistant bot just because a sub-par bot could drive people away without the business noticing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Google's new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity" (... for those of us who have their sense of identity entirely wrapped up in how well they can wrangle a business transaction over the phone, I assume).

</comment><comment><USER20> Well..We made Google Duplex for businesses in 6 months with the team of 3: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17037469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17037469)

</comment><comment><USER21> Jokes on you, I already don't have a sense of identity. Not rly a joke.

</comment><comment><USER22> A bit of me likes to think that, given the extent to which speculative fiction has grappled with questions like these, and given the degree to which the tech industry coincides with speculative fiction's readership, we already have all the answers to said questions.

We do, on the other hand, also have many fictional examples of how to abuse this kind of tech.

In the end, though, I think it's fair to assume that we have a number of decades before solutions become truly pressing.

</comment><comment> purple-again I agree with the author. Googles new appointment setting functionality is pretty cool but what if it gains the ability to reason. It will be able to start writing novels and putting writers out of business. It could start negotiating treaties with foreign leaders and inadvertently cause world war 3.

I'm just not sure that Google thought through all the possibilities before unleashing the ability to make haircut appointments.

<comment><USER23> You forgot /s. Some HN readers may take this at face value.

<comment><USER2> Sadly, many general consumers would believe in this fantasy risk 100%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It will certainly make scammer's jobs easier.

</comment><comment><USER25> Combine this with something like lyrebird and it going to be really easy to scam people on scale.

</comment><comment><USER26> Simply a bizzare article that does not help with people that do not understand the technology.

</comment><comment><USER27> Showed the Booking AI built for Google Assistant to my Barber today he was cracking up

</comment><comment><USER28> Paper with proper evaluation section or it didn't happen.

</comment><comment><USER29> This makes me wish we could down vote articles. just meaningless fear mongering.</comment>


Consider Giving Feedback to a Company After Your Next Interview - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2018/04/01/feedback-after-interview/#.WsEA8185rrc.hackernews <comment><USER2> As a company, consider giving an answer to candidates. Too many times did I have to beg to be given an answer. Feedback was probably too much to ask for.</comment>


A Former Dentist Uncovering Sugar's Rotten Secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/the-former-dentist-uncovering-sugars-rotten-secrets <comment><USER2> > If sugar industry efforts skewed research about sugar's harmful health > effects, then national and international guidelines about sugar consumption > are, in fact, based on flawed science.

Ancel Keys' holy-war against saturated fat was based on flawed science.

> Until recently, federal organizations such as the Department of Agriculture > and the Food and Drug Administration had never officially recommended caps > on the amount of sugar a person should eat, even though caps for nutrients > such as fat and sodium have existed for more than 20 years.

In the last year or two, research papers have been published that acquit saturated fat and sodium of the charges against them. But there's so much inertia in the propaganda campaigns that it might be another generation before 'the experts' figure out how to give good advice.

> "because profit-maximizing behavior leads [big corporations] to be out > pushing products which end up causing disease."

This point is nicely-stated, but is not pointed at the best targets offered by the food industry.

edit: Key's -> Keys'

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the summary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is very important to distinguish between fructose and glucose sugars. Fructose is actually much more poisonous then glucose is. It seems metabolized mostly like alcohol. Now, with the high fructose corn syrup everywhere, makes the situation not better.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

EDIT: fructose is not so problematic if it's still embedded in fibers like in fruit. Bacteria then eat most of it, before it is absorbed.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the language mix-up is making it hard to tell people. We "know" that the brain eats sugar and that sugar is a simple form of energy. Unfortunately this applies to glucose specifically, not to any sugar-class molecule and not to the white crystalline powder called table sugar. Glucose is ok for you. Practically every tissue in your body can use it right away. Fructose is, as you said, metabolised in the liver, and is practically toxic. Table sugar and HFCS are both 50-50 fructose-glucose and biologically equivalent.

<comment><USER6> Table sugar is sucrose, which is a molecular combination of fructose and glucose.

HFCS is, as I understand it, just a bunch of fructose and glucose mixed together.

Does that make them biologically equivalent? I've always been curious about that. I recall reading a claim that the body's need to split the sucrose molecule makes it lower impact than if it were pre-split.

<comment><USER7> Many producers' batches of HFCS used to be contaminated with mercury [1]. Thanks to the efforts of a lone FDA whistleblower, industry no longer uses mercury to make this substance. But high fructose corn syrup may still be contaminated with starch - chains of glucose - thereby giving HFCS a much higher calorie count than is on the label.

Sugar is fine if your liver is healthy. It keeps me from wasting away.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/01...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012601831.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _Sugar causes cavity_

This is bit of smoke screen and obscures the real problem. Sugar alters metabolism, and in larger quantities is practically poisonous.</comment>


Top Online Services for Physicians - <AUTHOR> http://www.medcrunch.net/2011/02/the-medcrunch-top-10-tech-services-for-physicians/

<comment><USER2> And how many of these, when used in the free/non-corporate editions with poor password choice, are HIPPA compliant, and won't lead to patient data leaks?

That said, someone making an end-run around the horrible bureaucracy at most medical institutions is a winning startup plan, assuming you can get traction...</comment>


Fight - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/sports/boxing-youngstown-anthony-taylor-hamzah-aljahmi.html <comment><USER2> _Youngstown was a pugnacious steel city of 167,000 when Loew was born, with boxing clubs anchored in many neighborhoods. [...] A half-century later, Youngstown is down to a population of 65,000, a hemorrhaging of 100,000 people caused by steel-plant closings, a failure to diversify and the absence, so far, of a sustainable second act._

This is a fairly common story in the fighting world. The strength it takes to literally get punched in the face and keep moving forward is built as much by life circumstance as training.

I live in Warren, OH, about 10 minutes from Taylor's home. I moved back here after I graduated in college in 2008. While building my career as a developer, I spent time working in a call center and breaking down cardboard on an assembly line at a local automotive plant.

In those places, the lack of hope is thick in the air. Attitudes are negative, humor is sarcastic and caustic, and dreams are sparse. Just about every business around here has it. Poor service is expected and understandable, frustration is inevitable, and poverty is cyclical.

It's a common story in the rust belt. Hopes and dreams are one of Warren's biggest exports - college graduates who never return, pro athletes who don't look back, and successful entrepreneurs who struggle to find markets and skilled labor in the city limits to re-invest their fortunes. Instead they make donations. Their new businesses are built elsewhere. You'll count as many missions and soup kitchens downtown as you will shops and restaurants.

Hamzah Aljahmi and Anthony Taylor are both tragic figures. Aljahmi was killed pursuing his dream, while Taylor's dreams, undeterred by his physical deficits and crushing poverty, are now forever tainted. Like so many other would-be dreamers in Warren, he'll have to fight off the encroaching bitterness or risk being consumed by it. If that happens, his best scenario is a few acidy laughs on an assembly line. If he overcomes this tragedy, his best case scenario is escape to a fighting life in Las Vegas.

I'll be rooting for him. I hope to watch him on pay-per-view someday. In the meantime, I'll be here, programming remotely, spending my spare cycles daydreaming about solutions to the despair of our common hometown.

<comment><USER3> From Bruce Springsteen's "Youngstown" -

Seven hundred tons of metal a day

Now sir you tell me the world's changed

Once I made you rich enough

Rich enough to forget my name

(1)[http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/brucespringsteen/youngstown.h...](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/brucespringsteen/youngstown.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A beautiful read. A barely related event is the fighter that chose to tap out (signaling that he gave up) instead of knocking out his clearly inferior opponent (and risk injuring him or causing permanent damage).

The commentary along with the video can be seen here [1] and it's refreshing to see that people still have empathy and care about others.

[1] [http://www.mmafighting.com/2014/5/21/5736360/morning- report-...](http://www.mmafighting.com/2014/5/21/5736360/morning-report-ufc- fighter-taps-out-dana-white-faber-ludwig-cormier-henderson-renzo-gracie-mma- news)

</comment><comment><USER5> As someone with a concussion right now, it fucking sucks. Nausea, headaches, difficulty 'connecting-the-dots' with thoughts. I tried stepping outside today to fetch something I left in the car yesterday, and it was like turning on the lights to go to the bathroom after waking up in the middle of the night. Forget doing homework or reading those Greg Egan books I just got..

1 month down, (hopefully only) 2 more to go before post-concussion syndrome goes away..

<comment><USER6> Egan doesn't sound like the stuff you want to read when your brain is not in a great shape :)

<comment><USER5> Not gonna lie, I made it through the first chapter of Schild's ladder - slowly, but at least I tried. Then I tried reading the second chapter, and that's when I realized I should just save it for when I'll better appreciate/remember it..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like a beautiful article. Saved to Pocket. It would be pretty cool if NYTimes changed their app to better support this long-form content or maybe let you save articles to Kindle.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very short summary: One of the fighters died.

This is an emotional/touching story so read it for that if you like that. If all you care about is the bare facts, then that's the summary.

Personally I just skimmed it picking up random sentences here and there.

<comment><USER9> As violent as boxing is, it's very rare for fighters to die. Same for Football. Mountain climbing, rock climbing, downhill skiing and snowboarding are more dangerous, but the dangers get much less media attention than the attention over football concussions.

<comment><USER10> There's no way that those other sports are more dangerous than boxing. That's ludicrous. About 5-10 people die per year from boxing [1], while about 1 in 1.06 million people die per day of skiing [2]. That same source estimates that 1 in 1.2 million boxers die _per minute_ in the ring.

1\. [http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_svinth_a_0700.htm](http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_svinth_a_0700.htm)

2\. [https://www.nsaa.org/media/68045/NSAA-Facts-About-Skiing- Sno...](https://www.nsaa.org/media/68045/NSAA-Facts-About-Skiing-Snowboarding- Safety-10-1-12.pdf)

<comment><USER11> I've read that bare knucke boxing has lower death rates compared to traditional boxing due to the addition of gloves.

FORCE = MASS X ACCELERATION.

The extra mass is something the skull and brain cannot take. Also, the protection of the weapon (hands) assures fights go on linger than in bare knucke boxing. There is conflicting evidence however.

<comment><USER12> The point of boxing gloves is to protect your hands, not your opponent's brain. Hands aren't meant for punching, and repeatedly smacking them with great force into the hard skull of your opponent can easily damage them.

I suspect bare knuckle boxing is less satisfying (and thus less popular) because fights can end merely because one person can no longer effectively attack, rather than when one person is conclusively defeated by being knocked out. The KO is always the most widely satisfying finish in boxing and MMA.

<comment><USER13> > Hands aren't meant for punching

Actually...

[http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-human- fi...](http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-human-fist- punching-evolution-males--20151021-story.html)

<comment><USER12> Very interesting. That's a hypothesis from just last year that doesn't yet have widespread scientific support though, so the jury's now out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>