Why DIY fecal transplants are a thing - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy-fecal-transplants-are-a-thing-and-the-fda-is-only-part-of-the-reason/ <comment><AUTHOR> My wife has ulcerative colitis and it always surprises/annoys me when I ask the doctor about fecal transplants and they bring up the "ick" factor - <USER2> they think it is disgusting. They usually say something like "you really want someone else's poop in you?" At this point our only other option is for my wife to be cut open and have her intestines removed - which I find much more horrifying and risky, but they mention it as if it is just the normal thing to do.

<comment><USER3> > _but they mention it as if it is just the normal thing to do._

As usual, you need to evaluate your doctors' incentives. Do they make more money from

1\. Cutting your wife open, with all the associated hospital care or

2\. Fecal transplant, for which their competition is free DIY?

As Upton Sinclair said a long time ago: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Edit: BTW, I wish you luck with your situation. I gained familiarity because my wife had recurrent c-diff. During this episode, I saw such non-scientific quack-like behavior that I pretty much lost faith in most of the modern Medical Industrial Complex. And this was for a _bacterial_ infection, for which the literature is accessible to anyone with a high-degree of education and a decent biology background.

The takeaway lessons from our episode was: Take matters into your own hands as much as possible. You have 24 hours a day to work on your problems, the doctor has about 20 minutes. So if you're not an expert on your particular situation, then you're pretty well screwed.

<comment><USER4> Seems like it's a branding problem. "Fecal transplants" might get a lot more traction if we called them something a little more benign-sounding like "stool infusion." Transplant makes it sound like you're moving an organ around rather than just some fungible bodily excretion. A transplant also doesn't sound like something anyone ought to do daily...

<comment><USER5> Repoop?

<comment><USER6> You laugh, but there's a study out there called RePoopulate. My preferred term was "Intestinal Recolonization".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Intestinal flora are complex. Here's a story about _Akkermansia muciniphila_ (<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22458428>) which appears to make it harder for people to become obese.

Here's an article from Nature that shows mice can become more easily obese if you infect them with some, er, stuff, and that this is transmissible ([http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05414.html))

So you could be giving yourself stuff that would make it easier for you to become obese, or you could be giving yourself stuff that would make it easier for you to stay not-obese.

And that's just these few bugs. There are a whole range of really quite unpleasant things you could be getting.

Regulations are important. They're not to protect well informed people from making calm rational choices, although they do have that unfortunate effect sometimes. Regulations are to prevent cynical, or stupid, people from offering dangerous untested unproven "treatments" at great cost to desperate and ill people.

It'd be great if there was a safe way to decouple these, allowing people to gamble with their own health if that's what they want to do, but protecting people from evil con-merchants.

<comment><USER8> One of my favorite quotes on this subject from Kurt Harris:

>This is why I am very hesitant to offer ANY specific prescriptions for what to do about your gut biome. The advice to eat dirty vegetables or even start walking around barefoot in the dirt or drinking pond water or whatever "natural" activity you can think of is VERY DANGEROUS.

>The reason is not all parasites are "old friends", only some of the ones that are commensals that we co-evolved with. Getting toxoplasmosis from a cat, or a zoonotic helminth from dog shit or a dead raccoon or a pig tapeworm will do your immune system no favors and could even kill you.

>DO NOT PLAY AROUND WITH THIS CONCEPT UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

<comment><USER9>
      | walking around barefoot in the dirt [...] is
      | VERY DANGEROUS

Really?

<comment><USER10> In many parts of the country, yes, you get worms this way.

Hookworms directly or some other worms via eggs into small cuts.

<comment><USER11> Not in the US. They're very rare in the US, and everywhere with indoor plumbing.

People who are deliberately trying to get infected as a treatment for their Crohn's or arthritis have literally resorted to travelling to the third world.

<comment><USER12> This whole concept sounds like a South Park episode waiting to happen.

<comment><USER13> You mean eating with your bum?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Speaking of DIY and feces, ubiome.com is essentially 23andme for your intestinal flora. It's kind of interesting, although I haven't done it yet (they had a kickstarter that I missed out on).

<comment><USER15> They are now taking orders through their website.

<comment><USER16> Clicky: <http://ubiome.com/shop/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Your microbiome is essentially another organ in your body. You have 10 times the number of bacteria cells as you do human cells (they are a lot smaller) and they weigh over 2 pounds. Problems with this microbiome have been associated with very important diseases including autism, malnutrition and heart attacks. The economist had a good semi-science summary back in August last year [1]. I would recommend being just as careful getting a fecal transplant as any other organ, it would be terrible to catch something you didn't want like hepatitis.

It will likely be a while still until we understand the microbiome as the current sequencing methods only can sequence about ~1000 nucleotides at a time [2]. The strategy is to shred all the DNA into smaller pieces, sequence them and then try to assemble them back into the full genome. This is difficult to do in just single organisms and becomes very difficult when you're dealing with a soup of many different organisms in something like your gut. Hopefully we can make some good progress associating smaller chunks of sequence with phenotypes until we can sequence full chromosome lengths of dna.

[1] <http://www.economist.com/node/21560523> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_sequencing>

</comment><comment><USER18> I understand medical regulations are in general a good thing, but if a treatment works why not let people push it as much as possible? If doctors (note, preferably doctors who don't stand to make money from it being a roaring success) are confident that there's an inherent level of safety, and a patient is willing to accept there's an inherent level of risk, why not just let them get on with it? Like the article says, it'll just go underground and there's less to be gleaned through studying.

<comment><USER19> I'm guessing because doctors _aren't_ confident that there's an inherent level of safety. [1] Some are optimistic, some less so. But the way they and the FDA generally come to conclusions on these things, is through trials. Trials which have to be properly constructed and conducted to gather meaningful data.

Throwing the doors open isn't going to give you very good data. So we wouldn't be gaining anything we could rely on for study. We'd just be enabling DIY-ers to get (for-profit) professional assistance. Which is its own cause for concern.

These trials can certainly be better constructed, or made larger or more inclusive in such circumstances (many people facing very major surgeries that might be unnecessary should this approach pan out for their particular affliction; and shockingly-high success rates in early trials).

But I don't think there's a better alternative; most of the proposals would just open the doors to all sorts of chicanery that we've spent generations weeding _out_ of the health care industry.

[1] It's taken us this long to figure out the importance of gut flora in the first place. And we still have little-to-no idea how it works. So how in the world could someone feel objectively confident they know what is or is not a 'safe' treatment for it? Particularly when you consider the research that this flora impacts brain function as well. A transplant might treat a gut affliction but inflict an equally (or more) serious mood disorder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This was the process I just went through:

1) Is this actually safe to click on in a public place?

2) What the heck is 'fecal transplant'?

3) Clicked it - oh my goodness, that's gross

4) Read it - wow, this is actually real, and it's amazing

5) Who thought of this, and who tried it first?

6) I'm never going to get a story on the front page of HN, if this is what I have to contend with...

</comment><comment><USER21> Have fecal transplants worked on anybody suffering from Crohn's disease?

I have both Crohn's and UC and am running out of options and would really like to explore options for a fecal transplant. My doctor only does FT on patients who have C. Diff but not any others.

</comment><comment><USER22> The Scientific American podcast Science Talk had a very informative show on fecal transplants: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=fec...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=fecal- transplants-the-straight-poop-12-01-31)

</comment><comment><USER23> I have to do this. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

))<>((

(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQoJo81lujk>)

</comment><comment><USER24> What about probiotics for ulcerative colitis? A brief scholar search shows some tentative promise:

[http://www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v104/n2/abs/ajg2008118a.ht...](http://www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v104/n2/abs/ajg2008118a.html) [http://www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v100/n7/abs/ajg2005272a.ht...](http://www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v100/n7/abs/ajg2005272a.html)

May only help for the more mild cases, but I know a number of people who speak very highly of probiotics for various digestive tract issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I've looked into this and my wife has tried it, but it doesn't work for her, at least. I haven't heard much success from others with UC, either.

<comment><USER25> As one with UC I can say that this helped me: [http://shop.vsl3.com/vsl3-ds-20-pack---prescription- only-p17...](http://shop.vsl3.com/vsl3-ds-20-pack---prescription- only-p17.aspx)

It is magnitudes more powerful than anything else you will find. Taking it stopped my flare and anytime I feel a flare coming on I take it. I had to push my DR into getting the script after fistfulls of Asacol HD and prednisone a day only slowed my flare down.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The "ick factor" - which is pretty much reduced to a minimum if the donor stool is processed appropriately anyway - may not be long for the world. There has been at least one small scale study using synthetically derived donor samples - essentially taking someone's stool, figuring out what the hell is in it, and culturing accordingly.

That may also solve one of the big burdens behind using fecal transplant as a common technique - while the procedure itself isn't too expensive (though its not trivial, getting microbes past your stomach acid in quantity is no small thing), _testing_ donor stool is, because of the amount of things we could accidentally give you. Synthetic donor culture would have less of a problem with that.

</comment><comment><USER26> Less gross but also interesting is the earwax transplant anecdote contained in this article:

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/22/121022fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/22/121022fa_fact_specter?currentPage=all)

</comment><comment><USER27> Someone tell me in plain english: is the procedure to take fresh healthy poo and stick it in your anus?

<comment><USER28> Yes, in the hope that the bacteria from that poo will spread and start doing the job that you need done from poo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Same reason why you should suck your kids pacifier if you have a healthy digestive system.

</comment><comment><USER30> If anyone wants to view the site without js, you can just right-click the overlay->inspect element and then right-click the noscript element->delete node.

</comment><comment><USER31> Gives new meaning to the phrase, "Are you shittin' me?"

</comment><comment><USER32> I prefer the name "transpoosion".

<comment><USER20> Gave me a puerile giggle, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like there is a lot of Pootential in there!

Which illnesses does it cure?

</comment><comment><USER34> FTA: "Fecal matter occupied a gray area..."

<comment><USER35> Clearly a plumbing misconnection. Gray water is sinks, tubs, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is why we need 💩</comment>


Show HN: Littlelogs, a social journal of progress on your projects - <AUTHOR> http://littlelogs.co/

<comment><USER2> Congratulations for launching! What is / will be the difference between Littlelogs and Twitter e.x.? What wil make it special? I currently cannot check it out myself, I'm on the waiting list and don't have access yet, but from what I see it looks like no character limit? Will there be an API to pull down the updates and include them somewhere else, like on the project homepage?

small bug report: I tried signing up with this description

        "im currently working on a self hosted CI server (leeroyCI) and a static site generated which will soon get a hosted web interface to make it comfortable."

And I got s 500 error page. Replacing the description with "-" worked and let me sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Argh sorry. I've emailed you an invite instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been keeping journals for all my personal projects for quite some time now because I find it useful to "get context" when I go back to a particular project after some time. So something like this certainly piques my interest.

My journal is usually a journal.md at the root of the project, like so: [1]. It has a very simple format: datetime stamp, text. Sometimes I use bullets and indented text, but its usually prose or code.

Do you want to consider pulling journal updates directly from people's github as a feature? Of course, my kind of journal is a little too detailed - intended for me to pick up when I get back, but maybe a publicjournal.md which would be the author's ready-for-public-consumption version of the journal?

[1][https://github.com/vinodkd/halo/blob/master/journal.md](https://github.com/vinodkd/halo/blob/master/journal.md)

<comment><USER4> I've begun doing that too and second integration with git. I wonder though, why don't you embed your journal within the git log? Relevant commits of mine accompany a journal entry that goes after the empty line in the commit message, it makes for easy and contextual reading--these entries tend to be paragraph-sized though.

<comment><USER3> Two reasons: UX and intent

UX: My next comment usually involves looking at my previous ones and keeping that flow. sometimes my journal has todos that i'm tracking; things like that.So having it all in one place is useful and the git log experience breaks that into two pieces: one to view the log to date and another to add a new log entry.There's probably an opportunity for a shell script that loads up the log in an editor, allows me to add an entry, diffs it on exit and auto commits.

Sometimes i'll enter the same text in both my commit message and journal; and some other times my commit message essentially says "look at the journal, too detailed to list here".

Intent: Sometimes I use the journal to track not just what i am doing but also what I _should be doing_. Alternate paths I want to try, philosophical sidebars on why I'm doing what I'm doing, etc. These entries explain to my future self why the project is in the state that I come back to it :). I'm not sure how I could put that into anything other than prose - since its not fully fleshed out code yet. I've tried design docs and that works sometimes, but usually I just want to jot down my thoughts in a stream-of-consciousness mode rather than figure out the right document to put the thought in. The journal works best for this. Later, I'll pull things from the journal into a design doc.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I love to read about other people's workflows, especially when it's about something I also do. Can I get in touch with you once I have that shell script? It's very relevant functionality for something I'm working on that works with git.

<comment><USER3> Sure. just followed you on github if that's sufficient. i'm not much of a social media person, so let me know if you want to connect via email.

btw, another project idea of mine is to create a stream-of-consciousness editor: you create the content (code, meta-information about the code, whatever) as it "comes to you" and then figure out a place for it later. this is obviously the opposite of how our current file-based editors work, but in its simplest form its not that different in its implementation (autosave untitled files and allow them to be renamed, for example). What would be really cool is to have chunks of content belong to multiple documents, or being able to copy-n-paste by linking and so forth. Again, nothing that hypertext itself isnt already, just a concrete implementation in an editor context.

one more for "when I get to it" :)

<comment><USER4> I had thought about something similar for prose--when I'm writing I often get sentences or even paragraphs in my head ahead of time, so I want to have some easy 'capture blobs and arrange later' editor interface at some point.

I can see your email from your commits on halo, if that's alright I can get in touch through that address once I'm ready to open source what I'm working on.

<comment><USER3> dont think that will work - that's an aspirational email address that i hope to setup one day (you see how far the rabbit hole of procrastination goes :)).

edit: followed you on twitter. follow me back and i can pm you my email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a neat. I like the idea and implementation!

Reminds me a little of the .plan files from the old Quake days, mixed with twitter / social media.

[http://floodyberry.com/carmack/plan.html](http://floodyberry.com/carmack/plan.html)

I've signed up. Here's my little log: [http://littlelogs.co/rpgdan/](http://littlelogs.co/rpgdan/)

<comment><USER6> For a brief period I had a server that polled Twitter and updated a .plan file from my tweets, simply because I could, but that was two or three Twitter API versions ago and I've also been using fewer and fewer unix boxen since then. Part of me wants to revisit the concept and run a Twitter over QOTD (port 17) server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I dig it - I'd like to be able to use twitter for this (I suppose I could, nobody's stopping me) however I find that the twitter platform isn't really conducive to this sort of application - too much noise. A domain-specific tool like this has a place, I think.

</comment><comment><USER8> In my case it would probably document the _lack_ of progress rather than the progress. It's pretty hard to make steady progress on a number of tasks in parallel, the cost of context switching is huge.

<comment><USER3> To counter this, I actually wrote a "Dont break the chain" app[1] that pulled contributions from all my local projects (since i have some that are not yet on github, some on bitbucket, etc)

The idea was that I'd be happy if I made progress on at least one of them in general. Of course, I didnt finish that one either :)

[1][https://github.com/vinodkd/dbtc](https://github.com/vinodkd/dbtc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 500 Server Error when I submitted my application, replaced description with "-" as fallenhitokiri mentioned.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be fixed now, but I've emailed you an invite in the meantime. Sorry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is what electronic science notebooks should look like.</comment>


Aaron Wall of SEOBook will be interviewed on Mixergy today @11AM PST - <AUTHOR> http://www.seobook.com/mixergy-interview-today

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to the Mixergy interview page: <http://mixergy.com/live/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks. I asked questions based on the conversation here on HN. I should have it posted tomorrow.</comment>


Why I wrote Arel by Nick Kallen - <AUTHOR> http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/why-i-wrote-arel/

<comment><USER2> I'm more interested in the passing mention of FlockDB, which sounds cool. That'll (hopefully) save me from having to write my own distributed graph database.

<comment><USER3>
        Results 1 - 10 of 10 for flockdb

Wow. I'd like to know more about it too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The way that such chaining is possible is that each "query" (e.g., Users.order(...)) returns not an array of data, but a query object that one can manipulate still further._

That sounds just like the IQueryable<T> interface used in .Net's LINQ.

</comment><comment><USER5> All I could think of while reading the article was Monads</comment>


As A Developer, I know how to talk to my PO about existing code - <AUTHOR> https://blog.theodo.com/2020/01/developer-product-owner-existing-code/ <comment><USER2> Super interesting article. I think that creating such metrics, even if they are a little far fetched, really triggers discussions that improve comprehension of technical complexity by non-technical stakeholders. Thanks for sharing!</comment>


Speed up your docker container by caching node_modules - <AUTHOR> http://christian.fei.ninja/Cache-speed-up-docker-node-modules/

<comment><USER2> This works really well for Python/pip requirements.txt files too. Thanks for the tip. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great!</comment></comment>


PuzzleScript – an open-source HTML5 puzzle game engine - <AUTHOR> https://www.puzzlescript.net/ <comment><USER2> A while back I wrote a puzzlescript detector for itch.io, all the browser based games that use it are automatically tagged. You can see them here: [https://itch.io/games/made-with-puzzlescript](https://itch.io/games/made- with-puzzlescript)

<comment><USER3> ^ leafo is the creator of [https://itch.io](https://itch.io), which is about the coolest platform for indie game developers out there (deserving of respect alongside increpare's amazing puzzlescript). I personally like to think of itchio as almost an Internet Archive for video game culture, as well as serving a similar function for developers as MySpace did for bands in the 00's decade.

One of my favorite Puzzlescripts is Farbs' Dungeon Janitor: [https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6866423](https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6866423), along with his puzzlescript adaptation of Pac-Man: [https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6847686](https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6847686)

<comment><USER4> I don't use their platform and I'm not much of a gamer, but one criticism I read online is that they intend to police their platform more heavily than Steam. The creator criticized Steam's game policy on Twitter [0]. Of course, it's their platform and they can do as they please, and if you share their views then you might view this in a positive light. If I were involved in that community I'd have some concerns of rules being selectively enforced, although I don't know if that has ever been an issue with them.

Personally, I've been favoring gog.com over Steam as of late; they have a decent amount of DRM-free indie games available. I think anyone can submit their game, although I'm uncertain of their content policy, and I wasn't able to find any information on it after a quick search.

It's also worth noting that the actual Internet Archive [1] has a large amount of games freely available. It's mostly retro games, but I don't think there's any restrictions against modern games. Of course you'd probably only upload your game there if you were making it freely available, since it's meant as an actual archive.

[0] [https://twitter.com/moonscript/status/1004448157776793600](https://twitter.com/moonscript/status/1004448157776793600)

[1] [https://archive.org/](https://archive.org/)

<comment><USER2> Hey, thanks for replying. There was a lot of interpretation of my tweet that wasn't true, I posted a follow up:

[https://twitter.com/moonscript/status/1004802016252551173](https://twitter.com/moonscript/status/1004802016252551173)

We don't "intend to police," our moderation policies have never changed.There's a lot of weird stuff on itch.io that will always have a place. We don't want hate speech on the platform.

It's easy to have a gut reaction of supporting free speech without understanding the implications of what that entails. Many of the people clamoring for free speech on gaming platforms still want games to be removed ('asset flips', things they deem low quality, etc.). With my tweet, people conjured up an idea of a morality police force which is secretly making decisions about things people are allowed to say. That image is easy to attack, but it's not even close to how itch.io works, or will ever work.

The reason why I criticized Steam's stance is because they're trying to avoid responsibility. I'm sure you're familiar with how discourse goes on the internet: people with strong negative opinions are going to put in significantly more energy into spreading their message than an average person who just wants to read around. Their amplified message does not represent everyone as a whole though. Sure Steam can ban 'trolling,' but that's too vague. I have a pretty strong feeling that their 'trolling' ban is going to end up policing the morality of message as well. And, their process is probably going to be even more secretive.

<comment><USER4> Hi leafo, thank you for taking the time to write a response to my comment, I genuinely appreciate it. I received a couple downvotes for my comments and I was a bit down about that, but I think your response is very reasonable.

Like I said, I'm not much of a gamer, but your response makes me want to give your platform a try. I think if you're willing to have an open discussion about something for which the outcome might be unknown, things are going well. I certainly wouldn't make any claim to know what the kinds of barriers and limits we should have might be. And I totally understand that it can be very challenging to manage and weight all factors. Realistically, you might get some stuff right and wrong at times. We're only human, after all.

Having been in the tech industry for a few years, my big piece of advice would be to try and be as open as possible. I always find it incredibly frustrating when companies try to cover things up (not accusing you of doing this in the slightest). I think as long as you communicate openly with the community, everyone sensible will see that and be willing to take the time to dig into things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This puzzle game engine was written by Stephen Lavelle, who may be best known for Stephen's Sausage Roll.

Here's Sokogoban, a cute recent game made with the engine:

[https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=8726ac1f3addfe42cc5...](https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=8726ac1f3addfe42cc527c2217b848e8)

I recommend clicking the "hack" link at the bottom to see the code for the game.

<comment><USER6> Another tricky one by Stephen: [https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=bf3272fd7b73c43acb4...](https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=bf3272fd7b73c43acb4f835478fb25ee)

<comment><USER7> that gave me a bit more trouble than the go one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is great to see this pop-up again. Such a great toolset, deliberately limited, in such a way that anyone can create a game in an hour or so, but powerful enough that the games aren't all the same. You can put some genuinely interesting mechanics into it.

Stephen (the author) knows puzzle games. It is interesting to see his games, and the sophistication he has generated with this simple rule set. Terry Cavanagh (of Super Hexagon and VVVVVV fame) has also done some clever stuff with it.

For someone new to game design, it's a great start. And from there you can graduate to Pico-8!

Previous discussions in 2013 [0] and 2015 [1].

\---

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6501034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6501034) [1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9376940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9376940)

</comment><comment><USER9> Some classics made in this tool: Heroes of Sokoban 1, 2, and 3, by Jonah Ostroff.

[https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6860122](https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6860122) [https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6910207](https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6910207) [https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=7072276](https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=7072276)

</comment><comment><USER10> There was a game awhile back called "A Good Snowman is Hard to Build". The creator used PuzzleScript as a level editor/prototyper. He would make and play the levels inside the PuzzleScript engine, then import the completed level data into his own engine. I thought that was pretty cool.

<comment><USER11> Yup, here's the video at said timestamp: [https://youtu.be/W_okgL6HJX8?t=24m15s](https://youtu.be/W_okgL6HJX8?t=24m15s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Stephen Lavelle/Increpare is the most impressive indie game developer out there by an absolutely landslide imo.

Beyond things like Puzzlescript he's just madly inventive when it comes to making games and interactive experiences of his own. Stephen's Sausage Roll and Slave of God ([https://www.increpare.com/2012/12/slave-of- god/](https://www.increpare.com/2012/12/slave-of-god/)) stand out in particular to me but on the whole he strikes me as a guy who has tons of great idea and the talent to implement them. Only issue is he hasn't the time to devote to take most of them beyond being extremely impressive proofs of concept.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you understand games as a system of rules, an engine that lets you simply describe those rules and then set up starting positions becomes very interesting. I've been playing puzzlescript games from the gallery, as they come out, for a while. Would love to see how far you could push this idea.

</comment><comment><USER14> Who needs unity when there is puzzlescript and pico-8?

And before you say "it's a different use case" that was a rethorical question.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is so cool :D

</comment><comment><USER16> > PuzzleScript allows you to express this succinctly: > [ > Player | Crate ] > -> [ > Player | > Crate ]

I'm sorry. This just isn't succinct. You've immediately lost me. The idea is nice, and perhaps it works well within the realm of puzzle-specific scripting, but there's nothing here for a casual reader to interpret.

<comment><USER10> >...perhaps it works well within the realm of puzzle-specific scripting, but...

Yes, it is literally named "PuzzleScript". Also, if you continued reading, you'd find it is succinctly explained.

<comment><USER16> Okay, well maybe I've forgotten the definition of "succinct."

> briefly and clearly expressed

Brief, sure, clearly expressed? Absolutely not. There's more to puzzles than moving things around.

        [ > Player | Crate ] -> [ > Player | > Crate ]

This isn't succinct. This is brief. Puzzles, and games in general do more than move things around. So, if I wanted something to turn into a different item, where's the syntax for it?

There doesn't seem to be any.

The syntax is seems to be for moving things. Okay. What if I want something to slide over multiple tile spaces? Where's the syntax for this?

There doesn't seem to be any.

What if I want the item to progressively become more difficult to move, say for instance if I'm moving a snowball. Where's that syntax?

There doesn't seem to be any.

So, in short, an entire syntax has been developed for one feature: movement. And it doesn't do it well. Why would I use this?

<comment><USER8> On the off chance that you have a genuine interest in knowing the answers to your questions, and are not grandstanding, I will answer.

First differentiate between the syntax and the tool. This isn't a tool that supports every possible game. It is designed for creating movement-based puzzle games. Though it can support many others, that is its focus. You can certainly stretch it to do Tetris or Threes, but probably not Mario.

If you are involved in game technology, it is a masterclass in supporting a very large (but still restricted) class of games in a very small tool set.

So, specifics:

> if I wanted something to turn into a different item

        [> Player | Box] -> [Player | Contents]

assuming you open your box by moving into it, or

        [Action Player | Box] -> [Player | Contents]

if you want to press the action button.

> What if I want something to slide over multiple tile spaces

        [ > Player | Crate ] -> [ > Player | > Crate ]
        [ > Crate | no Wall ] -> [ | > Crate ]

The first line says moving into a crate sets the crate in motion. The second line says it keeps going until it hits a wall.

> if I want the item to progressively become more difficult to move

What does it mean to become more difficult, given that moves are atomic actions? (Back to the restricted domain of this tool.) But, for one possible design, we can do:

        [ > Player | LightObject ] -> [ > Player | > LightObject ]
        [ > StrongPlayer | LightObject ] -> [ > StrongPlayer | > LightObject ]
        [ > StrongPlayer | HeavyObject ] -> [ > StrongPlayer | > HeavyObject ]

Regular players can move only light objects, strong players can move either.

The ethos of the system is that to change state, you change object type. This is less restrictive than it sounds, because it is possible to layer objects. But it is still restrictive. And deliberately so.

> it doesn't do it well.

Based on the calibre of people who have used this, including for the rule development and level design for decently successful commercial indie games, it might be worth entertaining the notion that it might just be you. A more constructive and educational alternative might be to try and specify the same sophistication of rules in a more succinct syntax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I haven't been working on my game since my newborn has been my priority but I have an open-source tetris-attack like game built in eletron, typescript and phaser.

Its deterministic, has multiplayer, and frame to frame recreation to the tetris-attack mechanics

[https://github.com/omenking/swap-n-pop](https://github.com/omenking/swap-n- pop)</comment>


Ask HN: Forecasting FIFA World Cup outcomes, statistically, for fun - <AUTHOR> We are 1 week away from FIFA World Cup 2018, given than it is one of the most important sport events worldwide I though it would be an interesting and entertaining exercise to try and predict the outcomes of the matches, Im wondering what are the most effective approaches to do so and if there are some free data sources out there that one can use to build a model.
For predicting the odds of a team winning an specific match it seems that there are 2 approaches that have been proved to be effective:
- Using Elo Ratings [1] - Using the bookmaker consensus model [2]
And we can easily obtain data to setup a model based on those approaches from the Elo Rating website and betting odds comparison sites respectively.
Now, for predicting the score of a given match it seems most approaches seems to use statistics about shots per game, shots on target, and goals per game. But I couldn't find any website to use as data source for that information.
So Im wondering what models or techniques could the HN community suggest, and if someone is aware of some website to use as data source to create a model to predict a match score.
[1] http://www.eloratings.net/about [2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.02824.pdf <comment><USER2> You can track the movements of the odds for already scheduled games and look for movements in the odds/spread that are unusual.

Off topic, but to make money:

You can open an account with a book in both home countries, and try to bet the home team on the away book and visa versa. Most locals bet on their home team so if you bet in the opposite country, your odds get better.</comment>


Tracking Blood Sugar - <AUTHOR> https://eric.jain.name/2018/11/25/tracking-blood-sugar/ <comment><USER2> I've been using one of these for about 6 weeks, and I find it is not very accurate, but the convenience that allows checking the readings very often nearly makes up for the huge error bars. The libre freestyle 14-day is usually within 15 mg/dl when the reading is between 80 and 100, but above that range, it is usually off by 20 to 30 percent of the correct value (not 20-30 mg/dl) and mine has never read much higher than the finger-stick test, only lower. The lower numbers make me inclined to believe it, but they are simply not true, the meter gives only about one significant digit of accuracy throughout its range, and it is pretty far off or refuses to produce a reading when my blood sugar goes below 60 mg/dl. Still, being able to see at a glance whether one is 100 or 200 is quite useful. Medicare pays about $500/month for the attachable sensors, which are extremely convenient and non-problematic so far.

There is a far better wearable system ready to go but not in production, a combined sensor and automated insulin dispenser, that has passed human trials, but no one wants to go into production with it because of liability issues. Given that people are riding in self-driving cars and landing in aircraft on autopilot, each of which are also potentially fatal and involve a larger set of variables, I wonder if and how long it will take to progress in this regard.

<comment><USER3> The libre is meant for monitoring the trend of the glucose, used together with a fingerstick reader. You can calibrate the values if you use xDrip to get better accuracy.

If you're interested in using a closed loop, take a look into AndroidAPS or Loop, how to build one by yourself. It's all open source and works really well. Been a user for some years now. You just need to compile it by yourself and own the right hardware.

<comment><USER2> > The libre is meant for monitoring the trend of the glucose, used together > with a fingerstick reader.

Then it gets to be an issue with cost and convenience, as hauling around both systems with lancet device and strips and insulin and syringes and glucose tablets is a nuisance for anyone who does not carry a purse. Test strips cost around a dollar each (if one eschews the likes of Walmart), and it is very difficult to get Medicare to pay for more than 3 per day. I do not know if they will pay for any now that they are paying the higher monthly cost of the libre sensors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a second non-diabetic who tracks their glucose with the same non- invasive device and started analyzing it.

Blog post: [https://richardsprague.com/notes/cgm/cgm_analysis/](https://richardsprague.com/notes/cgm/cgm_analysis/)

Slides from presentation last week: [https://www.slideshare.net/richardsprague/quantified-self- se...](https://www.slideshare.net/richardsprague/quantified-self-seattle- january-2019-continuous-glucose-monitoring)

He also tweets about it: [https://twitter.com/sprague](https://twitter.com/sprague)

<comment><USER4> It seems to still be invasive: [https://www.freestylelibre.us/support/faq.html#faqTabstab-3](https://www.freestylelibre.us/support/faq.html#faqTabstab-3)

> The sensor is applied to the back of the upper arm with a simple, disposable > device called an applicator. When the sensor is applied, a small (5mm) > filament is inserted just under the skin, and held in place with a small > adhesive pad.

'Inserted just under the skin' means it's still invasive, but that sounds nicer than regular needle-sticks so perhaps 'less-invasive' would be a more accurate description.

<comment><AUTHOR> Per the people I know who have tried it, including the author of this post, it's totally painless. One can debate whether or not a filament you can't feel is invasive, but for all practical purposes it's the same as no filament.

For clarity: the measurement you pasted is the length of the filament. The width/thickness is ridiculously tiny. Basically, this product has the same UX as a nicotine patch.

<comment> Engineering-MD From a design perspective definitely invasive. Design strategies and regulations change greatly for products which penetrate the skin. But you are correct in that it is a patient friendly device without the associated burden of lost invasive devices.

<comment><USER5> From an FDA perspective invasive also. Otherwise you wouldn't need a prescription.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wear a FreeStyle Libre every day, AMA. It's very good for T1s, of course.

It's reliable enough - the biggest downfall is that it's around 15 minutes behind real-time, ie, what you can measure with blood. Sometimes it can feel 'stuck' too, and change rapidly between a short amount of time.

The second model, which I am waiting to try, includes Bluetooth alerts if a trend high or low is detected. This may make it even more useful.

<comment><USER7> What do you mean by 'second model'? Like a new version of the FreeStyle Libre?

I just got my first CGM, FreeStyle Libre 14 day, 2 days ago :) The relief I've already experienced from not having anxiety about where my blood sugar is at has been incredible. That said, being able to set alerts for lows/highs and not having to manually scan the sensor would be huge improvements.

The way I was checking blood sugar before (finger pricks) it seemed like I'd gain relatively little by using a pump, but now I'm thinking a pump may be indispensable if used in combination with a CGM: Since I can now see how my blood sugar is changing in near real-time, if I have errors in dose size, I'm going to want to be able to make small correction...

<comment><USER6> Yes, v2 is coming soon or is now out :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there any devices that track insulin levels directly?

That's what I'd be most interested in. Folks conjecture that it's your insulin response that causes weight gain rather than the blood sugar increase. They're not as correlated as you'd expect!

Source [https://www.google.com/amp/s/optimisingnutrition.com/2015/05...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/optimisingnutrition.com/2015/05/03/glycemic- index-load-versus-insulin-load/amp/)

<comment><USER9> Summary: I have no citation but my understanding is that measuring insulin levels needs to be done from a blood draw, so a Freestyle Libre-type device wouldn't work.

The Freestyle Libre and regular continuous glucose monitors measure glucose in the interstitial fluid under the skin - not blood. This is why the numbers can be wildly different to a blood glucose test done via finger-prick.

From what I've seen while researching very low carb diets, insulin levels are incredibly important and influence a lot of body chemistry. For example, someone without type 1 diabetes can have a normal blood glucose but only because they're producing an enormous amount of insulin. A large amount of insulin in the blood will cause fat to be stored, so the patient puts on weight.

<comment><USER10> Your example is someone without diabetes but referred to as a patient?

<comment><USER9> My comment wasn't clear; apologies. I was referring to someone who had blood drawn to test for and diagnose high insulin levels. I'd classify anyone having that test in a clinical setting to be a patient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Freestyle Libre requires a prescription (why?) — is there another similar system that does not?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. In the US, all similar products require a prescription. This is by far the best available option (no fingerstick calibration, longest-lasting sensor, easy mobile app, etc.). Basically, get this one. It's $80 including 1 month of sensors.

I believe the thinking is that people need a professional to discuss results with. I understand that perspective, but I don't agree with it, and I definitely don't agree that having someone to discuss results with should outweigh the increased access/adoption of over-the-counter sales. This is the first product that makes it practical - even easy - and completely painless for non-diabetics like me to track blood glucose informationally, so perhaps this will change. That said, the FDA has made other overly-conservative decisions, like disallowing fingerstick A1c tests (which don't require fasting or a full venous blood draw) for first-pass screening of diabetes: [http://www.onsitehealthdiagnostics.com/blog/a1c/](http://www.onsitehealthdiagnostics.com/blog/a1c/), [https://twitter.com/troyd/status/1018150306125758465](https://twitter.com/troyd/status/1018150306125758465).

<comment><USER11> Thanks for clarifying.

As a side note, I think this requirement is completely bogus. You should be able to get any "read-only" medical device you want, anytime you want, especially in a country where there is no universal healthcare. I see a contradiction where on one hand the authorities say: we have to protect you so that you don't harm yourself and on the other the same authorities say: your health is your responsibility and we want nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER5> You need a prescription because it's a continuously attached invasive medical device. You don't need prescriptions for finger stick devices so that's the only difference between them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I enjoyed the Authors blog post history of:

Tracking Blood Pressure

Tracking Blood Sugar

Chocolate Popcorn

Panna Cotta

<comment><USER13> Plus Smoothies and Protein Shakes. There's clearly a pattern here :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The sensors worked as advertised

I mean... yes. They're a prescription medical device used by Type 1 diabetics to stay alive.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately this means less than you'd think. See other comments on this thread on the subject of accuracy. Also, from my understanding, the current (still wanting) state of accuracy is the result of large improvements during just the past few years. Prior to that, CGMs were still prescription medical devices used by Type 1 diabetics to say alive.

And more unfortunately, it has been my experience that information about managing blood sugar given to diabetics by doctors is almost uniformly quite bad (I've received the same sort of overly simplistic, misguided instructions from 4 or 5 different doctors myself; now I just nod and let them finish speaking). As a result, nearly every other (non-engineer/scientist) diabetic I've been met has very bad numbers (A1C: three month average blood glucose)—as I would have too were I to follow my doctors' advice. Instead I have very good numbers which are a result of research and reasoning I had to do myself.

<comment><USER14> That's troubling. Which doctors have you been speaking to? I've always gone to see endocrinologists specializing in diabetes and have never had a doctor give me overtly bad advice.

<comment><USER7> Always general practitioners. I tend to just visit them when I need a prescription now. I haven't visited an endo since I never understood the purpose: I suppose they are more expensive and I can just use the internet. My A1c is generally high threes, so I'm not sure what else they could offer. I've asked general practitioners and they have never been more concrete than: endocrinologists can help you figure out which pump is right for you. But, internet.

Edit! High fives, not threes. See my comment below.

<comment><USER15> Wow - if you're Type 1 and have an A1C in the "high threes"...you're definitely one of those exceptional patients. Your A1C is probably better than some non-diabetics!

I could see why you have a pretty high threshold for the quality of advice you want. Not sure it's a typical experience, though.

<comment><USER14> It seems dangerous to me. One unit of insulin too much and you're in diabetic coma territory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious about this. Theoretically healthy people shouldn't care about their blood sugar since your body normally regulates your blood glucose using insulin and other hormones.

If you're wondering if you may be pre-diabetic then wouldn't an A1C test (home tests available and are very accurate) be a better diagnostic test?

<comment><USER16> That way you can detect a problem, yes.

But HBA1C can sometimes still be good, even for people who have high & low glucose peaks.

Maybe because the average value will still be good if you have equal peaks "up" as "down"? i don't know..

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is absurd that two (not one) doctor's scripts are needed to buy a sugar testing device. I've been trying to get this for my mother but it has been an awful experience in terms of their willingness to sell. I wish a company that actually wants to make money would soon offer an alternative.

They are opaque on pricing, do not answer questions about where to buy, do not clearly state what kind of prescription they need.

</comment><comment><USER18> My mother had the Freestyle Libre and liked it. Now using a Dexcom which works with her Apple Watch. I just bought her a Dario finger-stick glucose meter for her birthday which plugs into iPhone lightning port ($40!).

[https://imgur.com/a/24FhAON](https://imgur.com/a/24FhAON)

[http://intro.mydario.com/DarioGlucoseMeter/about.php](http://intro.mydario.com/DarioGlucoseMeter/about.php)

</comment><comment><USER19> There is a German company offering personalized food recommendation based on measuring blood sugar: [https://www.millionfriends.de/](https://www.millionfriends.de/) (Google Translate: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.millionfriends.de%2F)).

</comment><comment><USER20> I have the Medtronic MiniMed pump, which includes its sensor that the pump uses for automated basal dosing. Accuracy is similar to what others have described.

<comment><USER21> How well does the automated bits work? I've considered a pump in the past for that reason, but was always afraid what mistakes could happen.

<comment><USER3> If you want to get even better system using AndroidAPS, get the DanaRS pump, which is the only manufacturer allowing unofficial use.

Before you must do some reading and understand the concepts. OpenAPS and AndroidAPS are state of the art systems and you can do even better than the basal setup using the oref1 SMB algorithm. I know countless of diabetics using it and we all have much better and easier control in our therapy.

[https://openaps.org/](https://openaps.org/) [https://github.com/MilosKozak/AndroidAPS](https://github.com/MilosKozak/AndroidAPS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When I lived in Canada I used to occasionally see infomercials about blood sugar monitors that didn't require pricking fingers - are those considered to be any good or is it some kind of infomercial scam? If they are considered to be mostly accurate, why can't that technology be used instead of having a 5mm needle in your body, which probably feels uncomfortable, particularly for the elderly.

<comment><USER5> Monitors that don't need a finger stick can take blood from other body areas, usually the forearm. The theory is there are less nerves in places other than the finger.

The result is not considered as accurate compared to finger sticks but it's an option for people that can't really stick their fingers I guess.

They're mostly the more modern ones that don't need much blood. Also the ones I've purchased have a special attachment for the lancet device to accommodate the different location.

The ads do seem to imply that you don't need to use a lancet but that's just marketing and advertising. You still need to use a lancet to get a drop of blood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tested my blood sugar with strips for a few days. One wierd thing I noticed for some meals is I'd be at 98 blood sugar or so before the meal but within 30 minutes after a moderate meal I'd be at 78 or so. Seemed really backwards.

<comment><USER23> Digestion uses a surprising amount of energy, this is why people tend to feel sleepy after carb-heavy meals. And diabetics need to plan carefully.

<comment><USER24> >why people tend to feel sleepy after carb-heavy meals.

No. This is well understood science. The fatigue you feel soon after eating is caused by postprandial hyperglycemia, or a "spike" in blood sugar soon after eating.[1] You can, and I have tested this after overeating carb heavy meals and that's exactly what's going on.

I'm prediabetic, so I watch this carefully as I have a family history of diabetes.

[1] [https://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/nutrition- exercise/nu...](https://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/nutrition- exercise/nutrition/tired-hungry-after-eating-diabetes-questions-answers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I know someone who could benefit (either psychologically or medically) from a sort of holter monitor for her blood glucose levels. Are you the person who wrote this? If so how did you get your prescription?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the author, but the author simply asked their primary care doctor for one and I know others who have done the same. Next time you're at the doctor, just explain that you want to be proactive about health and ask for one.

Make sure to get the 14-day version: [https://www.freestylelibre.us/system- overview/freestyle-14-d...](https://www.freestylelibre.us/system- overview/freestyle-14-day.html). It's about $80 (cash to a pharmacy, not through insurance) and includes 2 14-day patches.

Over the next year or two, performing at least a few weeks of real-time monitoring per year will become standard practice among those who consciously monitor their health. With the Libre, doing a few weeks per year is no harder, and not much more expensive than a home blood pressure cuff. It's not even all that expensive to do year-round.

(I don't think this should require a prescription, but in the US it currently does.)

<comment><USER10> It's a waste of money and time for the average person that eats right and exercises. It borders on obsessional behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Fasting glucose and A1C tests done over the past few years show me at low > risk for diabetes. But these tests don't necessarily capture how much blood > sugar "spikes" after meals–something that may be a better predictor of > disease risk.

It's hard to take the author's concern seriously when he is at low risk. A better take is that he's just curious.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd be curious to know how he measures stress levels.

<comment><USER27> I don't even know how I'd go about measuring stress levels, but I did notice that there were two instances where my blood sugar staid elevated for much longer than it should have after lunch, and both times there was a somewhat stressful/non-routine situation (an interview, and riding a scooter across town).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What about availability of this outside the US?</comment>


Maintaining Hacker News Culture - <AUTHOR>

Some time ago, I read/imagined a post about how Hacker News is not a news portal, but a discussion forum. By posting here, people encourage healthy discussion about those topics.
I feel that HN is loosing that focus because a lot of people are using it as a replacement for Google Reader. For example, today, Amazon acquired Kiva. On the Internet, there are a lot of sources that will post this news. It'll flow from top of the line news blogs (TC and GigaOm) to people who simply reblog stuff to gain traction on their blogs.
On HN, within a span of a few minutes, two people posted the same topic, one a report from ZDNet and the other from TC (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3726164 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3726172)
This is counterproductive. Both posters got a good number of points for posting those items, but HN is not a numbers game. Your value is from your comments and not how many items your copy paste from the Internet.
To that end, I propose that HN should implement a technique similar to StackOverflow where as you type in your topic or attach the link, the system searches for similar items and hints at those to alert the poster that they're just wasting their time. If they still insist on posting, HN stalwarts who have negative voting rights should exercise them.
Now here's the irony - Someone would probably already have proposed this exact method on HN, but since there's no easy search or StackOverflow style hinting, I have no way of knowing about it...
(n.b. A lot of people will say that that tech will need a major overhaul for HN, which in it's simple form cannot support such searches and we don't want to upgrade. Why not? Some extra functionality never hurt anyone :) ) <comment><USER2> Social news sites usually have a life-span measured in a couple of years. Usually, their death - slow or rapid - begins when they reach critical mass and start adding tons of new features, and they miss the point- which is social news (duh). Anybody remember Digg?

As an aside, technology wise it's probably actually worth discussing the same thing every six (or 3 or 1) months - the answer will be different every time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm annoyed that Hacker News isn't as active as Reddit. We need more (good) content and discussion. How can we achieve this while... maintaining the culture?

<comment><USER4> It's doubtful that you can, honestly.

I went on a fairly sizable rant last night about HN's decline into mediocrity lately.

<comment><AUTHOR> well, one way forward is to have the moderator's role more clearly defined. This is a society that no one runs in essence. Thus, the good way to deal with it would be a little bit of tech as I described above and some more moderating...

<comment><USER2> I think pg, and all of the people flagging and voting on stories would dis- agree (that nobody runs this 'society').

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> HN's ranking algorithm is pretty good, just give it some time, it will kick in to make sure only the good content stays on top.</comment>


Show HN: passgo, a command line password manager written in go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ejcx/passgo <comment><USER2> Why aren't the site names encrypted too?

Users are encouraged to store their password files publicly, and yet the files contain a plaintext list of sites that the user has logins to!

Seems a serious privacy breach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not encrypting site names was a UX decision. If site names were encrypted, listing entries in your password store would require a prompt for your password.

<comment><USER2> Its a bad default.

You could make it so that site names were encrypted by default, but files with plaintext site names were supported.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some people may disagree with me but that's fine. There really isn't a correct answer here. It's a product decision balanced with security. I think _strongly_ wanting this is mostly FUD.

I firmly believe in secure defaults (with all my heart) but I don't think there's a compelling reason to hide site names in this situation.

I trust the strong cryptography (and DJB) that protects the passwords and this is plenty for keeping an attacker out.

Yeah, it's more information for an attacker but I don't think it buys an attacker anything meaningful. Responding to ping or listening on specific TCP ports and responding with service banners is "more information" too, but these are accepted. Running your company on someone else's computer used to not be accepted and now it is.

With strong cryptography there is no reason this information can't be public. If you're truly paranoid, you can always use a private repo or a private git server.

If anyone has a compelling argument for why this information should be secret by default I would love to make the change.

<comment><USER2> Here are two obvious reasons for wanting to hide this meta information:

1) ejcx signs up for a porn service and is embarrassed to admit it

2) ejcx has an account on some server compromised. The attacker now wants to get a nice list of other sites that the ejcx also uses, so they can try their luck to see where ejcx has foolishly used the same or similar password and login name. This information is just a github search away.

In both cases, ejcx may never be so foolish?!. But users of password management apps in general mess up all the time.

I want a password manager that I have confidence in to upload my passwords somewhere I can retrieve them if I lose my home computers etc. However, I don't want to announce to the world the websites I visit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't buy your second point. Your argument is that an attacker can try the password elsewhere faster, when the list of sites an attacker is interested in is small. An attacker could try every site in the Alexa 1m before anyone knows the sites passwords were dumped anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been using `pass` for the past few years (I wrote a post on setting it up on OSX which has been fairly popular [0]). However last month I switched to 1Password (I signed up to the family plan trial - I'm not set on it though).

The main thing I like about 1Password is the browser integration. It just makes life so much easier being able to click a button and have the password automatically entered into the form. I have a script ([1] - should be easy to adapt for this) which would poll Chrome for the current URL, decrypt or generate the password, and copy it to the clipboard - but clicking a button is a lot less friction.

1Password also has a xkcd-style password generator option, which is great for things like Netflix that you need to type in on TVs and such.

The main reason why I signed up for 1Password was so I could use it with my family, but the browser extensions only work on OS X 10.10+, so that rules out 2/3 family members (who run Windows 10 and OS X 10.6). You can access the passwords online, but it's no way near as user friendly. If anyone has a good recommendation of an alternative (I'd prefer open source), let me know!

[0] [http://www.stackednotion.com/blog/2012/09/10/setting-up- pass...](http://www.stackednotion.com/blog/2012/09/10/setting-up-pass-on- os-x/)

[1] [https://github.com/lucaspiller/passosx](https://github.com/lucaspiller/passosx)

<comment><USER4> I've not used it myself but I believe LastPass is the most user friendly option. I have no tech family that use it and love it's ease - not sure about OS X 10.6 support but certainly has windows and OSX support ([https://lastpass.com/misc_download2.php](https://lastpass.com/misc_download2.php)).

I like KeePass2 which is open source but nothing like as smooth as LastPass (No browser integration on OSX and integration on firefox for windows works but isn't perfect).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The code looks very clean and well organized. It appears to be doing things as simply and correctly as possible.

A 5 minute glance through the code didn't reveal any vulnerabilities. That's a better result than most.

</comment><comment><USER6> Shameless self plug: [https://github.com/creshal/yspave](https://github.com/creshal/yspave)

Password manager that is actually safe against attackers with access to your data at rest by encrypting everything (with authentication), including metadata.

</comment><comment><USER7> Simple alternative: storing passwords in gpg encrypted files and using emacs.

Emacs has EasyPG so when you create a file with .gpg extension and try to save it prompts you for a password to encrypt this file with. Similarly if you open a .gpg file it asks you for a password for decrypting it. This way your only dependency is emacs and you can store passwords file wherever you like. And you don't expose names of sites you need passwords for.

</comment><comment><USER8> > _The most important difference is passgo is not GPG based. Instead it uses a > master password to securely store your passwords._

"Instead" here seems to imply that GPG cannot securely store data in a password-protected file, which it can. (See the --symmetric option.)

It just simply uses a library, and perhaps a custom serialization format / a different format from what GPG uses.

One of the reasons why I encrypt my keyring with GPG (and I use a tool that uses/wraps GPG) is because I can recover the keyring then with only GPG: I don't need the actual keyring program, just GPG and the password.

</comment><comment><USER9> For newbies, it would be helpful to explain how to retrieve the encrypted password, aka ./passgo www.example.com. Didn't see it listed on the help and github page.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yay a password manager I might actually use, very impressed so far.

<comment><USER6> If you don't mind me asking, what's the features you're interested in that other managers don't have?

I've been tinkering away on my own password manager for a while, but since it's not made in a hype language, it gets zero exposure on HN.

<comment><USER10> Off the top of my head it should:

\- Work offline

\- Work on multiple platforms

\- Encrypt the passwords

\- Backups/distribution should not be dependent on a single provider

\- Ease of use (command line is fine, great even, but for the love of god make it simple)

\- Not require me to remember to copy around an encryption key

\- Open source is a great bonus

<comment><USER6> Hm, seems my solution ticks all checkboxes except multi-platform availability (python in e.g. Windows is… not fun). I'll keep that in mind for the inevitable rewrite, thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm still on the fence about password managers. I always worry that I'll end up on a computer without my passwords and not be able to logon.

<comment><USER12> I'd have to be without my phone, my tablet, and my laptop, while needing to be able to log into something. I can't think of a situation in the last couple years where I've not had at least one of those things, to say nothing of not having one of those things _and_ needing to log into something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very nice. I like the key feature being that your encrypted vault can be publicly posted. In a team environment, does it make sense to share the master password with all team members? Or is passgo designed for just the individual in mind?

I have been looking at [https://www.vaultproject.io](https://www.vaultproject.io) for team credential storage and sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sharing a password is bad for several reasons.

I plan to build sharing in to passgo, since I realize it would simplify things for a lot of teams

<comment><USER14> Sharing a password can be a good thing in some circumstances. My CO-founder has all my passwords to my encrypted backups and important business accounts. Just in case I perish, for example. Or in case I forget my backup password at an inconvenient time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sharing the password informally generally leads to bad practices, like a group email with the password, or multiple sticky notes.

A password sharing solution I have no problem with since there are real reasons to share

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a Go developer, I'm curious. Why is it that whenever a project built in Go is submitted to HN, the title mentions that it's built in Go? What makes the language special that it's worth mentioning?

<comment><USER16> This question comes up every time a "X written in Y" is submitted. Some times the language implementation is a novelity, but usually it's just a non- redundant piece of information.

Many people on this site care about the language, so why should we _not_ include it? People who dislike the Y ecosystem are free to ignore it, and people who have been looking for an X implementation save some brain cycles figuring out what it's written in.

Personally I think more articles should include this. I'm always disappointed when a cool-sounding project is written in Node..

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A neat idea, but then I think wouldn't it be clever to introduce such a tool with a backdoor, and then convince people to use it to store their passwords publicly? I'm not accusing this project of anything nefarious, but bugs happen, and a security review wouldn't be a bad idea. Not to mention some unit tests, maybe? :)

</comment><comment><USER18> When I use passgo, how do I collect my $200?

edit: Now that I've read the commit message; :(

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems interesting but why not to use GPG?

<comment><AUTHOR> I went with a master password and AEADs because I don't like GPG.

It appeals to a bigger number of people, too, since not all devs understand GPG and shouldn't be expected to.

<comment><USER20> Saltpack.org?</comment></comment></comment>


Venice test brings up floodgates for first time - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53361958 <comment><USER2> It's worth noting the corruption around the building of this infrastructure. The president of the region at the time had been arrested along with notable other people within the public and private sector. This, unfortunately, is the story for every public infrastructure in Italy.

<comment><USER3> > This, unfortunately, is the story for every public infrastructure in Italy.

I argue it's not the case. Over-bureaucracy (ironically, to fight "corruption", like the useless "anti-corruption authority") is one of the major reasons things get done at glacial paces (and the same reason sometimes people use "other ways" to speed up things). The replacement of Ponte Morandi in Genova is a prime example of this fact: to rebuild it lots of "rules" had to be suspended.

<comment><USER4> What do you think about Italians voting Silvio for so long?

<comment><USER5> That if you have two parties both of them are going to get a lot of votes.

<comment><USER6> You make it sound like a mathematical truth.

<comment><USER5> A sad one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Missing in the article is the cost of the MOSE system which projected to cost 5.5 Billion Euros!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project#Projections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project#Projections)

<comment><USER8> I suspect building a new Venice would cost a few bucks more.

<comment><USER9> Not really. Venice is sinking faster today due to seas rising, but the city has been sinking into the mud since day one. In the past buildings were regularly demolished and new ones built atop the rubble. At some point in recent history we decided to stop doing that, to lock all the buildings in place and "protect" them. This phenomena is not unique to Venice. Whether it is sea level rise in Venice, height limits in Paris, or widespread "heritage" status for anything over a few decades old, all over the world we protect buildings and architecture. This means sacrificing the needs of greater cities and the people who live in those cities.

Let's protect all the Venices of the world, but treat them as what they are: museums or theme parks, not places people actually live and work. Venice already has the boat rides and is talking about a gate price (a tourist day fee). Next will come the wrist bands. Then the mascots and cotton candy.

How many of the tourists on those giant cruise ships actually get off the boat? Do many of them that just look at Venice from their cabins? That might make Venice the world's largest public art exhibition.

<comment><USER10> The city that I live in faces similar issues, even though it is young by international standards, and those issues exhibit themselves in very peculiar ways.

If we were talking about a building that is actively maintained and played a significant role in events, I can understand the desire to preserve it. Yet, more often than not, the buildings are decayed due to neglect and very few people actually care about the building until it is about to be torn down. Worse yet, the structure has frequently been altered to the point where it is no longer of architectural interest. So yes, this is a concern from the perspective of the greater needs of cities. Which is why I was puzzled by the opposition due to the environmental impact.

On the other hand, I suspect that these attitudes stem from something other than a desire for preservation. It may sound noble to talk about the greater needs of cities, yet some mighty nasty projects have been undertaken in the name of redevelopment. For some people this brings up extreme cases of forced removal, serving the needs of special interests, or simply creating inhumane environments.

<comment><USER11> Sounds like Australia. Lots of 100 year old buildings of no cultural or architectural significance get protected status.

Meanwhile the government has no issue allowing the destruction of Aboriginal heritage and archeological sites (as well as old growth native forests) to make way for roads and mines.

<comment><USER12> I doubt there are "lots" of buildings over 100 years old remaining in the Melbourne CBD. Those that do remain gain significance merely because they have survived.

<comment><USER11> It's less the CBD, and more in the surrounding suburbs. There are old cottages scattered around that weren't good houses when they were built, and aren't any better today. The land they're on is worth a fortune, but they have heritage status so they can't be redeveloped, yet they're also not worth renovating because they're so far gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> FTA:

> _Protesters from the No Mose group tried to disrupt the test but police > stopped them._

The article doesn't elaborate on their motives at all but does anyone know what they were protesting? The cost? The corrouption? Surely not the function of the system itself...

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately it's a cultural trait in Italy that people prefer to have been right all the time rather than working together for a common goal.

The MOSE project was heavily criticized from the beginning for a variety of reasons, ranging from the basic physics principles on which it works, to the engineering details, to the effects on the lagoon's ecosystem. It is generally claimed that there are cheaper "other methods" to achieve the goal of protecting the city from high tides, but it's not clear which they would be, how effective they would be, and what would be their environmental and visual impact.

In any case, a protest from the group opposing the construction of the MOSE on the day of its general test is absolutely ridiculous. These people cannot possibly be asking for anything concrete, they just hope that something will go wrong so they'll be able to say that they've been right all the time, Venice be screwed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My SO used to work seasonally in Venice.

It is said that Venetians swear a lot, but perhaps those who got this impression were simply overhearing conversations about this system.</comment>


Reunion.com Raises Massive $25 Million Series A Round - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/16/reunioncom-gets-25-million-for-meeting-old-friends/ <comment><USER2> I agree but I don't think we'll see the same kind of fallout as last time. The fact that we (app devs), can maintain sites with much less cost means that even if people go bust with stupid ideas it should be much easier for good ones to weather the storm.

</comment><comment><USER3> 28 million users? Has anyone even heard of them before?

The premium account seems to add features that are anti-community fostering. If you're working on a social network I would think it's a bad thing if a writeup about you includes the phrase "snooping features".

<comment><USER4> That is very fishy. Where can that 28m number come from? From some popular widget they bought or something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been resisting the idea, but I have to say that this is starting to feel like another Bubble.

<comment><USER6> Out of interest, do you think anything about YC would be likely to change if this did turn out to be Bubble2.0? Would you be likely to scale it back, or to continue funding companies and hope that some of them could ride out the storm for however many years it takes?

<comment><USER5> I do wonder what we'd do if the weather suddenly got worse. We might have to encourage companies to be more self-funding. Maybe we'd accept fewer.

<comment><USER7> It is actually cool to do a startup following a burst in some ways. I remember early days of my uncle's start-up in 2001 and there was little pressure of making something to sell off in a year or two. You knew if you did a start-up it was either for the long haul or you don't do one. That is an important lesson for hacker entrepreneurs today: just because you CAN launch another idea technically you shouldn't if you already have something promising going on.

Plus it made for nice media stories to "survive" the bubble.

I forgot to mention the current salary is 2-3x what was being demanded back in '01-02 in India.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow. Yes, this is a scary development. This could easily be built by a couple of hackers with a few thousand dollars. I wrote about taking unnecessary money like this a few weeks ago at:

Outside Money and Irritable Bowel Syndrome

<http://blog.nanobeepers.com/2007/02/20/outside-money-and-irritable-bowel- syndrome/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I cringed when I saw the $25 million number and I cringed again when I saw what the site was.</comment>


"Oculus removed the headset check from the DRM in Oculus Runtime 1.5" - T-A https://github.com/LibreVR/Revive/releases/tag/0.6.2 <comment><AUTHOR> I had to google this to have any idea what it was about. The linked release notes don't explain any of the background, the entirety of the content relevant to the headline is this: "I've only just tested this and I'm still in disbelief, but it looks like Oculus removed the headset check from the DRM in Oculus Runtime 1.5. As such I've reverted the DRM patch and removed all binaries from previous releases that contained the patch."

Apparently Oculus was testing for a present oculus headset in its runtime, so it was difficult for a third-party devs to build shims to connect other VR hardware to it and enjoy VR games built for oculus.

Mods, I'd suggest changing the URL to something with a better explanation, like [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/oculus-reverses- course...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/oculus-reverses-course-dumps- its-vr-headset-checking-drm/) which includes the above quote in addition to explaining the backstory.

<comment><USER2> to expand on this a little bit;

There were two functions, one that checked whether the occulus headset was connected, and one DRM function. Occulus consolidated those functions into one, in what many assumed to be a move to be able to justify taking down projects like these under the guise of "they break our DRM", which did end up being a talking point against the projects later on.

Apparently they reversed this change now, and you can write a compatibility shim without breaking the DRM once more

<comment><USER3> forgive me for my ignorance here but what is a DRM function ?

<comment><USER4> An euphemism for a strategically designed defect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a more in-depth article about this (rather than just the changelog) at [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/oculus-reverses- course...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/oculus-reverses-course-dumps- its-vr-headset-checking-drm/)

The Article quotes Oculus - "We will not use hardware checks as part of DRM on PC in the future."

</comment><comment><USER6> Content has almost always sold hardware in the video game industry. Look at all of the exclusive content for Nintendo consoles. Or how many people bought XBox's for the sole purpose of playing Halo.

Sure, most VR hardware options may technically be peripherals for PCs, but at a cost of several hundred dollars or more, it isn't in the same category as PC mouses or joysticks. The way I see it, VR hardware is essentially a standalone device that connects to PCs, simply so that many people won't need to buy that too, saving them $1k-2k.

Creating exclusive games and buying exclusive content licensing/distribution rights for any gaming platform, especially ones in stiff competition for early adopters and the lion's share of a new market, is a great business decision. If Oculus hadn't secured exclusive content, people would have simply bought whichever hardware worked better, or shipped first. In this case, most people would have likely bought the Vive. Oculus knew that superior content is the tie-breaker and can even overshadow slight technological shortcomings, if they exist.

Oculus should never have reversed their plans to keep the content exclusive. Now, many people will just buy Vives and use them to play Oculus-subsidized content. Oculus could have created a great monopoly. Now I suspect they will have serious difficulty building a sustainable business. Peter Thiel is on Facebook's board and Marc Andreessen is on both Facebook's and Oculus's board. I can't imagine either one would support reversing the decision to make exclusive content.

<comment><USER7> A few counter points:

\- hardware exclusives may be a better business model, but consumers (at least a vocal subset) clearly don't like them

\- Microsoft seems to be moving towards having all Xbox games run on pc so console exclusives may be on their last legs

\- the vr market is relatively tiny, so splitting it up with exclusives will make it harder for devs to justify making content

\- game margins are much higher than vr hardware, and do it may be better to have store exclusives rather than hardware (something steam is doing without the backlash)

<comment><USER6> -Early adopters take considerable risk when buying new hardware. If the market ends up crowning a different system king, your options are: Accept that objectively/subjectively superior technology isn't the only thing driving sales and adoption. Or be a sore loser (which I'm not admonishing; VR tech is expensive) and complain loudly on message boards.

-I doubt that what Microsoft chooses to do with Xbox games in the future is due to regret or guilt about past decisions regarding exclusive content. Halo served them quite well at the height of the console wars.

-If I'm a dev making VR content and I am doing it to make a living, not just to make something cool to show my friends or as a fun project, my dream is that a VR hardware manufacturer pays a premium for exclusive rights. The hardware manufacturers can currently afford to pay more for exclusive content than they can hope to actually earn from the content, simply to drive hardware sales and platform adoption. I suspect it will be rough for developers, especially small teams, that are unable to negotiate exclusive deals. They will need to optimize and maintain their content for multiple platforms. And what can they hope to earn? <50,000 units in the wild, ~$25 per title Without an exclusive deal, it looks a lot like the movie industry. You either make a hit and do well, do really bad an move on, or worse, you do kind of okay, and then feel obligated to maintain the games and support the few that bought your game for the next few years.

-Exclusive content makes sense for many businesses. Doing it flawlessly, without causing potentially debilitating PR backlash is clearly easier said than done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They deserved the backlash for implementing it, and I hope the Rift continues to suffer now that people know Facebook's true intentions. Not to mention how poorly they treated early supporters after the buyout, e.g. stocking Rifts on retail shelves before they'd fulfilled orders for all backers, then telling backers who complained to get a refund and go buy one from a store...

They're only doing the "right" thing because they have no choice. They couldn't pump enough money into third party development to make up for the ill will they'd garnered with this exclusivity DRM, especially not with companies like Valve doing the complete opposite -- giving money to third party devs with no exclusivity deals whatsoever.

Turns out some developers can't be bought[1]. Who'da thunk it?

1\. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4nxpnq/fuck_facebook_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4nxpnq/fuck_facebook_and_fuck_oculus/d480x6v) (For the sake of fairness, it was a time-limited exclusivity offer that was made to the Serious Sam devs, but an exclusivity offer nonetheless.)

<comment><USER9> I never got the quest for punishment for actions like this.

They did something bad, the community reacted negatively. If they fix the problem, rewarding them is going to make sure it sticks around.

Continuing to "punish" them for something they fixed only sends the message that the fix was pointless and that it would have been better to ignore the problem like so many other companies (including Facebook themselves) do.

<comment><USER10> > Continuing to "punish" them for something they fixed only sends the message > that the fix was pointless

It also sends a message to other companies that things like this aren't forgiven easily, whether or not that's the immediate intent.

<comment><USER11> As a consumer it's a trust issue. How can I trust that they wont try to sneak this in some time in the future?

<comment><USER12> > How can I trust that they wont try to sneak this in some time in the future?

They will. They'll just have to do it more slowly than they thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Because there was backlash. But I doubt Facebook changed its original intentions of locking down the platform. What happens if Oculus Rift takes 80% of the market? Will it still allow the Vive or other headsets to play nice with Oculus-exclusive games?

This is Facebook we're talking about here. Why even take the chance?

<comment><USER14> Jeez, you can't even give them some credit for doing the right thing?

<comment><USER15> Doing the right thing in response to backlash suggests that you would rather do the wrong thing, but couldn't get away with it. There are several other VR vendors; this provides at least some motivation to favor another vendor.

<comment><USER16> So by your logic, nobody can ever legitimately apologize for something or change their behavior without being disingenuous. Everybody loses, no matter what they do.

<comment><USER15> No, not at all. But as another response noted, trust is a lot easier to lose than to regain.

A clear statement about the matter can help a bit. Active steps to make the ecosystem less proprietary would help as well.

That would help turn the message from "sorry we got in trouble" to "sorry we made a mistake, here's what we learned and what we're doing to fix it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is actually big news.

My trust in the Oculus store however remains broken

<comment><USER16> Why? They fixed the problem. Do you cut people out of your life the first time they make mistakes?

<comment><USER18> As with all things it would depend on what they did. If the mistake was stabbing a homeless person I certainly would. At the very least losing trust based off of mistakes seems pretty reasonable to me.

<comment><USER19> And why is the person making amends? Shouldn't that be taken into consideration? If they're only saying sorry to take advantage of you again?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I disliked the DRM as well, and applauded when they removed it, but on second thoughts, I don't find it unfair to expect something in return when Oculus is funding a game.

Developers are free to refuse Oculus's money and make a cross-platform game.

I don't see what was wrong here in the first place, when I step back and think about it calmly.

<comment><USER21> It's an attempt to bring hardware-based exclusivity agreements to a gaming platform (PCs) that has traditionally been more of a free-for-all. PC gamers overwhelmingly do not want this. The same goes for many of the other norms of gaming consoles. Many choose PC gaming over consoles for its relative openness and customizability. That's where a lot of the outrage is coming from, even if Oculus is fully within their rights to do this.

Also, Palmer used to go on record saying that they wanted VR to be an open platform. So there's a bit of betrayal mixed in.

<comment><USER20> The Palmer statement makes sense. Regarding the rest of what you wrote, would you be fine if Oculus stopped funding games and so there are less games made?

Because the alternative of Oculus funding games and not getting anything in return makes no sense.

<comment><USER22> I would be totally fine if Oculus stopped funding games resulting in fewer games made. That's a tiny price to pay for openness.

Would you have wanted Microsoft to fund web startups in the 90s that only worked on some sort of proprietary MicrosoftWeb? Probably not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In order to support the original intent of LibreVR (allowing any headset to run occulus content), the only way to bypass the hardware check was to remove the DRM checking completely.

This had an unintended consequence of potentially allowing abuse.

With Occulus removing that hardware check, LibreVR was able to revert it's "YANK ALL THE DRM" solution.

</comment><comment><USER24> The checks made no sense in the first place, it's a loose-loose on all ends for occulus. A closed ecosystem basically does not work when it comes to PC gaming, and with hardware this expensive it's not like you could buy the valve-sponsored vive and the rift.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does this mean any vr headset will work with games from the Oculus store?

<comment><USER26> You still need a third party wrapper like Revive to translate the games Oculus API calls to the OpenVR API most other VR headsets use.

This change just means Oculus will no longer deliberately block such wrappers from working.

<comment><USER27> Wow, this must have been a hell of an internal fight. Glad this was the conclusion though, open platforms are the only way I can see these current solutions being useful at all. Let's just hope we don't see similar restrictions cropping up on the other side of the fence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What does this mean?

</comment><comment><USER29> Different context, but Dan Savage articulates this well. Relevant (and censored, because he is who he is) paragraph from a long blog post [1] on Sanders vs. Clinton:

'It's ####ing moronic—it's political malpractice—to attack a politician for coming around on your issues. There are lots of other issues the queer community is going to be pressing politicians on, from passing equal rights bills and trans rights bills to defeating anti-trans bathroom legislation and RFRAs. If pols who are currently on the wrong side of any of those issues see no benefit to changing their positions—if they see no political benefit—they're going to be harder to persuade. Why should they come around on our issues, why should they switch sides or change their votes, if we're going to go after them hammer and tongs for the positions they used to hold? ("Please change your mind and support us." "No." "Pretty please?" "OK, I've changed my mind and I'll vote to support you." "#### YOU FOR NOT ALWAYS AGREEING WITH ME! I'M NOT VOTING FOR YOU! #### YOU SOME MORE!")'

[1] [http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/02/22/23606058/hi...](http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/02/22/23606058/hillary- clinton-used-to-be-terrible-on-marriage-equality)

<comment><USER30> Well, this is missing the point, in both cases. Opponents of neither Hillary Clinton nor Oculus are opposing them for the sole reason "they used to have this opinion".

In Oculus's case, this DRM was only the _most_ obscene manifestation of their exclusivity strategy - the one that would set them up to be, going forward, between a legal rock and a PR hard place if they kept it in (they'd have to either leave ReVive's DRM-breaking alone, making their case in court harder if suing someone breaking DRM with the _intent to steal_ games, or they'd have to send ReVive a DMCA takedown, and face a fatal PR backlash).

While Oculus has extricated themselves from that strategically untenable position, they're still pursuing a market-dividing strategy of exclusives through every other, subtler and less-ambiguously-legal, avenues, like timed exclusivity deals. THIS is why people are continuing to rail against Oculus.

If Oculus _genuinely changed_ their position on exclusives (ie, they removed that restriction for every game they'd "supported" with such a deal), the VR enthusiast community would, reluctantly, welcome them back into the fold. However, that is _nowhere near_ what Oculus are actually doing here - they're just adjusting their course so that they'll face _less resistance_ to do the stuff everybody hates them for.

So as to keep this comment "apolitical" (as if corporate actions are less consequential than outright political ones), I've posted my response to Savage in a separate thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11973600](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11973600)

<comment><USER31> Exactly. Flip-flopping is not bad. Having malicious intent is bad regardless of the method or "opinion". Both cases here are bad. Abandoning early backers for profit is malicious. No one forced Hillary to rally against gay-marriage in 2004, she did that for political influence. That is malicious. The fact that she has switched sides now that it's favorable (for even more political influence) proves it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Victory!</comment>


Plato's cube and the natural geometry of fragmentation - ezequiel-garzon https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/07/16/2001037117 <comment><AUTHOR> From the Timaeus "To earth, then, let us assign the cubical form ; for earth is the most immoveable of the four and the most plastic of all bodies, and that which has the most stable bases must of necessity be of such a nature. Now, of the triangles which we assumed at first, that which has two equal sides is by nature more firmly based than that which has unequal sides ; and of the compound figures which are formed out of either, the plane equilateral quadrangle has necessarily, a more stable basis than the equilateral triangle, both in the whole and in the parts. Wherefore, in assigning this figure to earth, we adhere to probability"</comment>