Social Networks Are Bad for You - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@GOODROOT/social-networks-are-bad-for-you-5a341d0aafa1 <comment><USER2> Adding a couple more articles I have come across this month on social networks and their unthought-out consequences.

We are so unprepared to deal with all this shit.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/07/us/colorado-students- caugh...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/07/us/colorado-students-caught- trading-nude-photos-by-the-hundreds.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/opinion/from-army-of- one-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/opinion/from-army-of-one-to-band- of-tweeters.html)

More than ad-blocking its a good write up on how the attention economy is just wasting everyone's time. [http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/10/why- its-ok-to-b...](http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/10/why-its-ok-to- block-ads/)

<comment><USER3> But, of course, no one questions the possibility of, like, you know, not letting kids use cell phones in school. Or maybe not letting kids use any form of digital camera, at all, ever? Is that actually impossible? Or just unreasonable?

Or, like, what if the reality is that taking a picture of your own nude body is not actually a crime? What if images of human nudity simply weren't criminalized?

A bridge too far?

<comment><USER4> > But, of course, no one questions the possibility of, like, you know, not > letting kids use cell phones in school.

That probably wouldn't have helped. I doubt they were taking the pictures at school.

> Or maybe not letting kids use any form of digital camera, at all, ever? Is > that actually impossible?

At this point, probably. You certainly would destroy your child's social life.

The bigger problem is parents _not knowing what the hell their kids are doing_. This is rather simple: "Yes, I'm going to have all of your passwords and occasionally I'm randomly going to take your phone to check _every single app_ on your phone and computer. And you will unlock them, or you are grounded and won't have a phone. Ever. No, you don't get a choice in this. If you don't want me seeing it _you probably shouldn 't be doing it_."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was close to deleting my Facebook account when I discovered the News Feed Eradicator[1]. This way I can still use messages, groups, events, etc. without having to experience the dreaded news feed. It really improved my quality of life.

Another major step I took was to stop posting. That way I had no expectations of feedback and logged in far less in general.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed- eradicat...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator- for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg?hl=en)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for introducing me to this extension. I've been using my hand to cover news feeds on fb, twitter, etc when I need to go in and respond to a message or something. Although it's easy for me to do that as social news feeds don't hog my attention as much as they induce anxiety.

<comment><USER7> Not many people seem to know about it, but there's also [http://messenger.com](http://messenger.com) for just the messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Things are different now. In our over-connected existence we have lost the > ability to create a blank slate. When, previously, you could separate > yourself from past lives and — through reflection and distance — achieve > emotional growth and maturity, you are now inhibited by the confines of > socially networked relationships.

This is an interesting section, and I think it holds true for a lot of people even if your initial response is "no one's forcing you to be connected".

I personally can't wait to graduate from college so I can delete my Facebook (for some reason a lot of college-related things require it). It's not a real blank slate at all, but it's better than nothing.

<comment><USER9> You'll unfortunately find that many things outside of and past college may require it as well _-_

<comment><USER10> I've never had a Facebook account, and I haven't noticed that I've been prevented from doing anything without one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've gotten rid of my Facebook account probably about two years ago now, and I haven't missed it since. I always thought it would be essential in keeping ties with old friends, but I've found that I naturally stay connected to those I care about regardless of Facebook.

I use twitter regularly, but it's mostly to keep track of my interests rather than social connections.

<comment><USER12> I have been close to deleting FB a couple of time, but I keep it for the unexpected / distant people that it keeps me in touch with.

I am going to Chile in a months time. I was there 15 years ago. I have a couple of contacts on facebook (I think I started using it around 8 or 9 years ago) that I will meet up with, but there are more who I would like to catch up with, but I have litterally lost touch with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It bugs me that people's justifiable criticisms of Facebook lead to tarnishing the whole concept of "social networks".

Based on the studies the author cites, the title of this article should be "Facebook is bad for you". But what about other social networks that don't focus on exploiting their users and manipulating them to addictive activity? (Dreamwidth is one that leaps to mind.) I'd bet dollars to donuts that the dynamics are very different in those environments.

<comment><USER14> I don't agree with all of the article, but I'd argue Twitter, Instsgram, Reddit and HackerNews follow the critical aspects of that dynamic.

<comment><USER15> I disagree. Instagram, yes, as it's pretty much a facebook addon these days, but:

\- Twitter is generally a way for people to follow famous/semi-famous people nowadays. Most people don't go there for their friends. If they follow someone, it's because they WANT to see what they have to see. There is little pressure to 'follow' someone back, like there is with Facebook friends.

\- Reddit is semi-anonymous. The running joke is that you never want anyone in real life to know your reddit username. It's all about sharing, but it does not have the same kind of "dredge up the past" issue.

\- HN falls in with Reddit. I know few people who use HN, and those that do I don't communicate with on it. Hell, most people don't even pay attention to usernames unless it's someone well known like tptacek.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I deleted my facebook a year or so ago.

I still talk to all the people I wanted to talk to when I had a facebook.

Obviously not for everyone, but I enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER17> The much-derided "right to be forgotten" is a key part of this. In the past you could just move to the next town, but now your permanent record is public and follows you...

<comment><USER18> This is not entirely true.

You can delete most of the content, and in theory, for 3rd party, it's pretty problematic to dig up. ( Unless you're a government agency, but that was always the case, wasn't it? ). You can even opt-out of archive.org.

IPFS would be a very different scenario, and that is one of the reasons I hesitate to join.

<comment><USER17> It's more like you do or say something stupid when you're young and years later it's still the top hit for you in Google. The ease of finding it makes a huge practical difference that I think is willfully overlooked by opponents of it - between a prospective employer or date idly typing it in, vs needing real actual investigation to ferret it out.

There is also that Google don't really care about this - they'll ruin your livelihood by dredging up your past mistakes for a couple of cents of ad revenue. That sort of power needs to be curbed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting view. "We are creatures who — for the sake of our own mental health — thrive on living in the present"

</comment><comment><USER20> Delete your account, create one with a different email address, and enjoy the reset.

Did it a while ago on Facebook, and although I've re-added a good 75% of people on the new profile because I still like to socialise with them, having a few weeks break in between was quite pleasant.

<comment><USER21> I have found it quite easy to ignore FB without having to actually delete my account. I login every couple weeks and spend maybe 2 minutes. I have all email notifications turned off. FB doesn't need to control your life just because you have an account.

<comment><USER22> I do the same with the added twist of using another browser for Facebook.

That way, the tracking via the ubiquitous buttons doesn't work and the barrier for "just checking Facebook" is higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would like to turn this around slightly. Social networks are necessary and will be for a very long time as curation networks. The alternative is simple too much information to deal with.

Here is an excerpt from a blog post called "Slaves to the Feed - This is not the realtime we've been looking for" I wrote some years ago:

"Let's start with what most people probably can agree. Information is accumulating online. The amount of available information is increasing at an exponential rate, some say it doubles every second year. This mean that any illusion of being able to stay up to date with everything that is going on is utopian and has been probably since Guttenberg invented the press.

Most people know this, yet that is exactly exactly what we all seem to be doing.

There is no shortage of content aggregators and aggregators of aggregators, daily developed to give us a better overview of all the sources of information we have subscribed to and found ourselves now depending on.

This has resulted in an endless stream of articles, news, pictures, websites, products, updates, comments of updates and comments to these comments, being delivered to us second by second that each of us have to deal with.

Constantly checking our feeds for new information, we seem to be hoping to discover something of interest, something that we can share with our networks, something that we can use, something that we can talk about, something that we can act on, something we didn't know we didn't know.

It almost seems like an obsession and many critics of digital technology would argue that by consuming information this way we are running the danger of destroying social interaction between humans. One might even say that we have become slaves of the feed.

It might be an obsession, but I think it's an obsession that many critics will find themselves having to submit to sooner or later. ..."

[http://000fff.org/slaves-of-the-feed-this-is-not-the- realtim...](http://000fff.org/slaves-of-the-feed-this-is-not-the-realtime- weve-been-looking-for)

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if the rise of networks such as snapchat that lack the permanence of Facebook can work to counteract some of negative effects mentioned here.

</comment><comment><USER25> I gotta warn my friends about this!</comment>


Thomas Tryon's Mystic Vegetarianism - <AUTHOR> http://cosmologicsmagazine.com/alyssa-metzger-mystical-vegetarian/

<comment><USER2> as a self-identified almost-vegetarian, i want my 5 minutes back. to add something thoughtful: a different vocabulary does not equal different ideas</comment>


Does a Front End Engineer need to be god at competitive programming?  - <AUTHOR>

Lets say I'm an undergraduate looking for a job as a front end engineer. is it essential for me to be good at competitive prigramming? <comment><USER2> No. Being great at competitive programming can't hurt you and if you manage to win some competition that might be an extra thing to list on your resume. But as a front-end engineer you're not likely going to have to figure out how to implement too many radically complex algorithms under intensive time pressure.

As a front-end engineer, the biggest thing that would help you is probably knowing enough about many of the common web technologies that you'll conceivably use and interact with so you'll be able to pick the easiest and simplest ways to solve problems. You also have to be good at confidently communicating with everybody from backend developers to designers to business guys and understand enough about what they're saying in order to advise them when one of their ideas wouldn't be a good idea to implement and have possible alternative solutions ready for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> how do you define competitive programming?

I'm 99% sure the answer is no, but I just want to make sure I know what you mean.

</comment><comment><USER4> not in my book</comment>


Gamer backlash against Spore DRM - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080908-gamers-fight-back-against-lackluster-spore-gameplay-bad-drm.html

<comment><USER2> Some random thoughts, as a game developer:

AAA games as we know them will peak and then decline. The PC is inexorably moving towards a fully open-standard platform on which DRM-laden products cannot work. Consoles don't suffer the same problem, but by cutting themselves off from an open world and locking the hardware specs at a fixed low level, they force development costs considerably higher. The Wii points to a future console market that seeks disruptive hardware innovations over a market-share battle, but development costs mean that third parties will have few incentives to participate in such a market.

Also, games with a large engineering scope have an astonishingly poor track record. Games with a high content scope are much more likely to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Meanwhile, Spore was cracked on the day of release, and pirates are enjoying DRM free Spore!

You've gotta wonder - how do game developers write code BLIND?! Because they obviously all are, as they don't see how much people hate DRM, and that pirates crack it every time! Though I've gotta find out how to do it, I could work in the day - and contribute to open source projects at night while I'm asleep! Woah!

<comment><USER4> I fully understand your grudge towards DRM.

However, before judging on the qualities of game developers one should better understand the world that they live in. They live in the world of 20th century show business, not your 21th century web development world. That's the world where channels are narrow and the technologies involved are expensive. That's the world of "short tail".

There is a real need in at least two distinct parties: developers and publishers, and maybe others such as producers. As computer technology marches forward, it gets more and more expensive to master, which means bigger budgets, which means both smaller number of games and larger audiences needed to make a game profitable. Bigger budgets and larger audiences makes publishers increasingly more cautious, so they pressure developers harder and harder to subdue to their perception of mass appeal. On the other hand, publishers, in their effort to protect as much of their revenue as they can, enforce copy protection on the games they release, including DRM.

I think the developers in general are not fond of DRM, but it's not them who decide. The developers would also be happy to make richer games, but they get pressured into diluting their product so that it would sell. The Maxis Software and Will Wright have an outstanding track record of making innovative games that sell well, so they should have had as much freedom as it gets in negotiating terms with the publisher and developing the product the way they want, but if you followed the development process from the prototypes you will notice how it got diluted too.

Bottom line: given the current state of the industry, we should be happy to get what we get. DRM sucks and I hope that the publisher will remove it if public resentment weighs something (which I doubt), and it is certainly out of developers' reach.

<comment><USER5> Interestingly my father brought up the Spore DRM in conversation last night. He plays games but isn't a gamer in the sense that he follows online news or current industry events. It was from a more mainstream outlet that he heard about the DRM backlash on Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's lots of other speculation about why PC gaming is on the way out. Shamus Young (<http://shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/>) generally has the view that PC gaming was killed by a) Excessive focus on graphics (which he has termed "bling mapping"), and b) Overly byzantine DRM. But mainly a, although the response to spore seems to indicate that people _gasp_ actually like owning the things they buy.

<comment><USER7> PC gaming is not on the way out any more than the cinema is on the way out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Top-shelf PC games without an integral multiplayer component are dead. It's getting to the point now that sales barely justify straight console-to-PC ports, much less expensive titles like Spore.

<comment><USER4> Spore is not your average game. In fact, I would say that Spore doesn't fit into current classification of games as single-player vs multiplayer; thus brings state of the industry a step further. I.e. you can play your game in single-player mode just fine, but you also can publish your creatures with a press of a button so that they will be saved on game servers, other players can comment them on the Web and may encounter them in their games.

You have to prove your point if you want it to be taken seriously.

<comment><USER9> Spore's specific combination of single and multiplayer content makes it a prime piracy target.

The advantage of highly multiplayer-centric games is that they are easier to protect against piracy; either by requiring an account to play online (which can be terminated) or by preventing identical CD keys from playing simultaneously. This can be circumvented by playing on a LAN or using Hamachi, but both solutions only work well with a specific coordinated group.

Spore's creature sharing multiplayer is easily sidestepped by piracy; it's possible to download all the user-created creatures via torrent post release. As that's the only multiplayer component of the game, there's very little difference in terms of piracy between Spore and any other single-player focused game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That game was sooo overhyped. It takes you about 3 hours total to go from the spore to the space age, and at the space age it gets very boring.</comment>


We can have human language translated code - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>I was thinking about that. We can have programming language transl files with translation for all the keywords in different languages. Then we can automatically show code with english/french etc keywords. Do you think that's tecnically feasible? <comment><USER2> I've seen the inverse case: A translation of a programming language to another human language.

I've saw a Spanish version of Pascal and a Spanish version of Logo, it was in Argentina approximately 20 years ago. They were versions for students.

The problem is that is nice that the user defined functions mix well with the core functions. If the language has the "print" function, you can add the "println" function. You can translate the core functions, but now the user defined functions look odd.</comment>


Goto considered awesome: Goto in Scala using delimited continuations - <AUTHOR> http://blog.richdougherty.com/2009/03/goto-in-scala.html <comment><USER2> When I taught advanced compilers last semester, one of the projects was a Scheme-to-C compiler that implemented first-class continuations via call/cc.

I realized when going over that material, however, that most students didn't know what a continuation was, or how to use them, so I created a "by-example" tutorial:

[http://matt.might.net/articles/programming-with- continuation...](http://matt.might.net/articles/programming-with-continuations --exceptions-backtracking-search-threads-generators-coroutines/)

It covers exceptions, backtracking-search, the magic "amb" function, magic sat-solving, generators and cooperative threads.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fantastic resource! I've been fascinated with continuations recently because of just what you cover: they are an tool that can be used to implement many higher-level tools, like exceptions, generators, and cooperative threads. Things like this get much more clear when you see how closely they are related.

I am curious about your assertion that "with macros, it is not difficult to simulate preemptive multithreading". How would one go about doing this safely?

(The font changes partway through, btw. Maybe you forgot to close a tag?)

<comment><USER2> Good question.

In short, you can use the macros to hide the context-switching (yielding).

You could, for instance, force every function to perform a context switch right after its called. Since languages like Scheme encode even loops with function call, you're guaranteed to eventually hit a switch point. (And, if you allow other looping constructs, you could use macros to hide a yield inside them as well.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Delimited continuations are a powerful new control flow construct that's available starting in Scala 2.8. In addition to useful applications like automatically transforming blocking, synchronous code into asynchronous code, it can also be abused to add in the tragically missing goto statement (in a limited form) to the language.

This clever implementation also uses exceptions for flow control. If you examine the debugging output from the continuations compiler plugin, you can see how this implemented. Basically, code around a 'shift' statement is segmented into two functions--one before the shift and one after. The one after is turned into a callback from the first.</comment>


Experts Say Healthcare.gov a "Breach Waiting to Happen" - <AUTHOR> http://www.additiveanalytics.com/blog/experts-say-healthcare-gov-breach-waiting-happen/

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, the closest this gets to describing flaws is citing the OWASP top 10 [0].

I suppose whenever someone does indeed hack into the system, we'll finally find out the specifics of the weaknesses.

[0] - [https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2013-Top_10](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2013-Top_10)</comment>


Scammed by Amazon's "A-to-Z Guarantee" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/759e4b63a925/ <comment><USER2> Amazon sided with the buyer because you neglected to respond to Amazon's email. That's on you...not Amazon. To make the claim that you were "Scammed by Amazon's A-to-Z Guarantee" is a bit disingenuous to say the least.

A more apropos title may have been, "I didn't respond Amazon's first claim email and they sided with the buyer".

I think you can only file a claim for up to 90 days past the date of delivery.

<comment><AUTHOR> (OP here) Yes, I definitely made a mistake--I saw the email and naively assumed that Amazon would deny the claim since the phone clearly was not stolen. I made an assumption that they had access to Verizon's stolen phone database, or that they would decline it since it had been nearly 4 months since the phone was sold. As well, this hit my inbox right around Techstars Demo Day, so I was in full presentation rehearsal mode and was sleep-deprived to boot, so I wasn't closely paying attention to my email inbox.

The point I'm making with this post is that Amazon needs to push harder to change its policies for individual sellers. It should not be acceptable for a buyer to claim a phone as stolen nearly 4 months after purchase, and for Amazon to accept that claim as true. Amazon has enough clout as a huge corporation to make this happen.

<comment><USER2> And my point is that I fail to see how you go from your own mistake (not responding to the claim) to you being scammed by Amazon. I take issue with your post mentioning scam at all. You dropped the ball from your own end and you came up on the short end of the stick. You weren't "scammed".

<comment><AUTHOR> There are several ways Amazon could have prevented this. I wrote this post to bring attention to ways in which buyers can scam legitimate sellers using Amazon's "A-to-Z Guarantee."

1) Amazon can (and should!) require sellers to post the IMEI (unique identifier) of each cell phone to Amazon as part of the sale process.

2) Amazon can then easily verify whether an IMEI has been listed as stolen _before_ allowing the item to be posted.

3) If the buyer claims a cell phone as stolen after purchase, Amazon will have the IMEI and can verify this with the carrier. In my case, it was definitely not stolen.

This still leaves a gap where the buyer could purchase the phone, tell the _carrier_ it has been stolen, and then get a refund--but the buyer in this case would not be able to use the phone, since that Galaxy Nexus model only works on Verizon. Carriers are working on a database (that should be live this month according to news sources) that will enable carriers to report stolen phones to each other, so in that case the buyer would not end up with a workable phone.

Currently, Amazon doesn't do any of this, and their policies enable buyers to scam legitimate sellers. I'm asking Amazon to put tighter policies in place to prevent fraud.

<comment><USER2> It's like yelling into an echo chamber.

I see that you not only didn't make my note on Medium public, but you actually fucking deleted it and I was no more or less critical of you there, than here.

So, since you seem to be in the business of speaking to other entrepreneurs, I can only surmise that by "speaking" you mean, in one direction and you aren't at all interested in "listening" if it's critical of your position...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the idea is that Amazon would rather have actual businesses using their service instead of people getting rid of old stuff. Dealing with returns is the main reason why I've never attempted to sell anything on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not a scam.</comment>


Global FinTech Gains Business Unit Alignment to Increase Time to Market DevOps - <AUTHOR> https://blog.flux7.com/global-fintech-gains-business-unit-alignment-to-increase-time-to-market <comment><USER2> This blog post reads like someone ran it through an MBA jargon generator.</comment>


Inside America's Growing Bulletproof Clothing Industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.racked.com/2017/12/14/16738162/bulletproof-clothing <comment><USER2> A contrasting point to the American trend: where I live (Vancouver, Canada) it is illegal to possess bulletproof or stab-proof clothing without a permit. (!) In fact, even DIY-ing your own protection is illegal without a permit.

Personally, I find this philosophically hard to reconcile.

[https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment- business/busin...](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment- business/business/security-services/body-armour)

<comment><USER3> Is there any reason why this might be illegal? I understand that defensive gear is forbidden when it can also be used as a weapon but I don't understand why body armor can do anyone any harm. I am curious what reason there are to forbid body armor than is not dangerous to anyone.

<comment><USER4> Australian here: I presume the reasoning is along these lines...

No one has any reasonable expectation of being at risk of being shot/stabbed.

The only reason, therefore, that you would wish to have access to something like bullet-proof clothing or ballistic protection is that you foresee it likely you will soon be in a situation whereby you will be shot at.

About the only conceivable situation that you are likely to be shot at is if you forsee yourself or are planning to be engaged in some type of violent action against a police/military force.

Therefore, the only people wanting bulletproof clothing are those planning violent action against a police/military force. And since no one else who is deemed "socially sane" has any desire to own such a peice of equipment, banning it comes with the two benefits of not curtailing normal citizen's freedoms, while adding an illegal thing/signal to the kind of people who do or would plan to do bad things.

Edit: I realise there is the additional possibility that the person seeking body-armour sees themselves involved in gun-fights with other gun-toting individuals/criminals. Even amongst the criminal classes (and certainly amongst civilians), that is seen as almost an equally preposterous/rare idea as gearing up to take it to the police...

<comment><USER5> That line of reasoning is eerily similar to "the only people who would want to use encryption are bad people who have something to hide."

<comment><USER6> Also an Australian. I have a feeling this may not make much sense to Americans.

Bulletproof clothing only protects you against bullets (well it protects against knives too but you can buy less expensive slash/stab resistant clothing). In Australia there is virtually no gun violence. The only people who can shoot you are cops. They will only shoot you if you're doing something that justifies being shot at. Therefore, the only reason you'd need bulletproof armor is if you intend to do something that would justify the police shooting at you.

Encryption on the other hand has legitimate purposes. It's quite possible for someone to say steal all your money by intercepting your bank account login and it requires no special, heavily restricted equipment to do so.

<comment><USER7> There's Bikies/Gangs who do drive-by shootings.

<comment><USER4> True, but without commenting on the merit/justice of it, they've historically focused on targeting themselves/each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> GF's kids came home yesterday talking about school shooting safety (hit perp with a fire extinguisher -- which is too heavy for any of them to lift), the safe closet, etc.

Their chance of being shot is infinitesimal, while the chance of choking or dying in traffic (1K kids/year in the USA, for example) is real. But there is no training on what to do in these cases.

Seems like it's all part of the terrorization of the populace, of which this clothing is a symptom.

</comment><comment><USER9> Lack of any significant gun control is one of the biggest motivations for me to consider moving out of the states. My wife is from Australia and it seems as if it were a night and day difference when it comes to gun control. I wish our founding fathers had written something more explicit and more prohibitive so that perhaps more lives could have been saved to gun violence.

I may sound paranoid but I may end up taking a serious look at some of these options in the near future.

<comment><USER10> The efficiency and power of modern weaponry far surpasses what the Founding Fathers could dream of, it's hard to fault them for not foreseeing the advancements in weapon tech long after their deaths.

I agree with you on looking outside of the US, though.

<comment><USER11> I don't know why so many people believe the founding fathers would think differently if they saw the world of weapons today.

They had just fought and won a war largely due to the ability of commoners to fight off the threat of the most powerful colonial power in the world. The second amendment was written to allow people to defend themselves collectively (hence the mention of militia) from the threat of nation states and corrupted powers, not carjackers and armed robbers. If they saw the world of weaponry today, I wouldn't be surprised if they would interpret the second amendment to include grenade launchers and machine guns...because that is what the potential _external_ threats (and possibly internal threats) have become.

You may believe the world has changed, but I still find it short sighted to go around disarming people. The count of people killed in genocides even in the last half of the 20th century is enough to dissuade me from putting my security solely in the hands of a government. And I say that as someone who generally hates America's obsessive gun culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I looked up a couple of these and it seems like a normal jacket with hidden pockets for bullet proof plates of armor to go over your vital organs. In retrospect, I guess that is the only way they could do it - but something about the article had me imagining something higher tech, like somehow the fabric was tougher or durable enough to stop bullets. My imagination was the bullet proof spray from Richie Rich, but the reality seems closer to wearing a bulletproof vest under your coat.

<comment><USER13> I'd like to see something that acts like a stronger version of corn starch and water. Normally flexible, but stiffens up when moved at high speed.

<comment><USER6> It's in the works: [https://www.popsci.com/poland-develops-bulletproof-liquid- ar...](https://www.popsci.com/poland-develops-bulletproof-liquid-armor)

<comment><USER14> Wonder if the impulse of this liquid is fast enough to stop a speeding bullet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How much does this stuff weigh?!

My flak with Level IV SAPI plates was like 35 pounds, that was just for the armor and nylon, and it was roughly tank top shaped. God only knows what something jacket-sized would weigh if it were lined in ballistic ceramic plates.

The thought of international VIP types trudging around like a big ol' bulletproof Harrison Bergeron is actually kind of funny now that I think more about it.

<comment><USER16> I browsed one of the listings the level 3 stuff to stop small caliber hand gun bullets is listed as 4kg or about 9 lbs. probably similar to wearing a military style vest with the plates removed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In the UK about ten years ago there was a rash of news reports about children being sent to schools in tough neighbourhoods wearing stab-proof clothing. It was never clear whether it was commonplace or just marketing from a startup.

I haven't seen anything since then in the media but the startup from the time appears to have grown their product range significantly. (I won't name them but a quick google will find a few outlets).

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm honestly still baffled by how the concept of "freedom" got conflated with gun ownership in the US.

Personally I prefer the freedom of not having to be worried about being shot by any disgruntled imbecile who takes advantage of his "right" to a gun.

I would really appreciate an explanation of this. Right now it seams like just a fantastic marketing/brainwashing strategy by the NRA but I would love to hear a well explained argument for this.

<comment><USER19> Have you read a bunch of literature online about these topics?

I feel like there are many, many, pro-second amendment groups, not just the NRA, and perhaps that could shed a little light on it.

I'm willing to bet there are many reasons.

Off the top of my head:

\- An organism has the basic instinct and right of self preservation. Police generally focus catching criminals after they've committed a crime. So if you want the freedom to protect your basic right to survive and defend yourself, a gun equalizes your chances with potential attackers. You don't have to be young and strong, just well versed in using the weapon and in possession of it.

\- The ability of the population to make things difficult for the government to institute total martial law is a basic check on wholesale removal of civil rights or due process. People seem to think militias in the mountains of Kentucky would be completely ineffectual in this regard but fail to notice how the Taliban has been very effective for decades in Afghanistan.

Etc.

This really isn't a topic that I am expert in but there has to be more reasons if you look for them.

<comment><USER18> I don't agree with these arguments.

> An organism has the basic instinct and right of self preservation.

If you want to ensure self preservation, take steps to create an environment where the likelihood of survival is higher not lower. All the reliable evidence that I've seen points to higher gun ownership correlating strongly with higher murder and suicide rates and to the USA being an outlier in terms of violent crime as compared to other developed countries.

> Police generally focus catching criminals after they've committed a crime.

Well where that's true (and having lived in several countries, its not true everywhere) that's certainly a failing in law enforcement.

> a gun equalizes your chances with potential attackers.

This is extremely doubtful. Attackers generally attack in groups. They typically have planned their attack whilst you're taken by surprise. Also criminals are generally better versed in violence than the typical citizen. Pulling out your gun is often likely to turn a robbery into robbery and murder.

> The ability of the population to make things difficult for the government to > institute total martial law is a basic check on wholesale removal of civil > rights or due process.

This is the most ludicrous of all the gun lobby arguments. Seriously, you're planning on subverting the US government with your collection of handguns? The same government that spends more than 500 Billion on military expenditure/year?

> People seem to think militias in the mountains of Kentucky would be > completely ineffectual in this regard but fail to notice how the Taliban has > been very effective for decades in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a failed state. The Taliban are likely funded by a lot of well heeled supporters included their partners in the Heroine trade.

<comment><USER19> I feel like your initial comment was in bad faith.

You've shifted from "I don't understand the argument."

to

"I don't agree with the argument."

These are two very different things, and I would have responded very differently if you had written the latter. More precisely I wouldn't have responded at all. There are lots of topics where my personal opinions are one thing, but I do understand people's rationale for believing something very different.

And most importantly, for my peace of mind, I try to maintain the humility to realize that just because I came to a conclusion doesn't mean I am a priori correct. I am not necessarily smarter or more well informed than the people with whom I disagree, so I maintain skepticism about how substantive my opinion is.

YMMV but this general concept keeps me mellower and happier than imagining I am somehow on the right side of every issue.

<comment><USER18> Sorry, I realize I was heavy handed in my reply and I've edited it slightly.

I feel I should rephrase - I personally believe the arguments as stated are largely tools of propaganda by pro-gun lobbies and it baffles me that this isn't obvious. (And again I'd be eager to see evidence that this is not the case and there is justification for conflating freedom with gun ownership).

I appreciate you taking the time to engage in this discussion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A woman with a rare genetic mutation that has protected her from dementia - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/health/alzheimers-treatment-genetics.html <comment><USER2> Quick summary of the findings:

\- Patient had a PSEN1 E280A mutation, which predisposes you to a 99.9% risk of developing early-onset Alzheimer's.

\- Patient was expected to have Alzheimer's by 50. She is currently 70, with very little signs of cognitive decline. Although she has large amounts of amyloid proteins (hallmark of Alzheimer's) it has not reduced her cognitive capacity.

\- Patient had two copies of the APOE3ch gene variant. _The study indicates this mutation was primarily responsible for protecting the patient from Alzheimer 's._

\- Imaging tests showed she did have large amounts of amyloid protein deposits, but the amount of tau tangles, was relatively low.

\- Experiments have shown this APOE3ch gene variant reduces ability of APOE to bind to certain sugars called heparin sulphate proteoglycans (HSPG). APOE <-> HSPG binding has been implicated as one mechanism that may contribute to amyloid + tau protein deposits.

<comment><USER3> Could someone use CRISPR to inject two copies of APOE3ch in regular Akzheimer's patiens?

Sorry if this sounds silly, I have just a very rough understanding of genetics.

<comment><USER4> I was wondering the same thing. Again, sorry if this is obviously a weird question, but I also have a layman's understanding of genetics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It could actually be an additional regulatory de novo mutation or epigenetic mutation that is preventing the expression of that mutated gene.

Despite what people below say, understanding the pathways involved is significant because drugs can be made to replicate the same biological effect to block the disease. This is what biopharma looks for.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nytimes did a piece in 2017 about a similar situation [1] about studying the Tsimané [2] and the Tsimané Project [3]; it's a different slant on Alzheimer's but, with such a complex issue, we need to federate and examine all such views.

[1][https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/alzheimers...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/alzheimers- cure-south-america.html) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiman%C3%A9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiman%C3%A9) [3] [http://tsimane.anth.ucsb.edu/index.html](http://tsimane.anth.ucsb.edu/index.html)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for that. The interplay between human parasite evolution is fascinating. Here's a good paper I read some years back about helminth infections and the beneficial effect on autoimmune disorders (among other things) [1].

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1618732/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1618732/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://archive.is/HF7Nh](http://archive.is/HF7Nh)

</comment><comment><USER9> This make me curious about mutations and human evolution.

By 50 years of age she has past her (natural) maternal age. So it's not like women with that mutation would bear more children.

How would such a mutation help her lineage? But that same question, more broadly, how do mutations that benefit people past their child bearing age factor into human evolution?

I suppose mentally healthy grandparents are able to spend more time with grandchildren freeing up the parents to be more productive. They can also pass down wisdom, techniques that could benefit grandchild.

<comment><USER10> > How would such a mutation help her lineage? But that same question, more > broadly, how do mutations that benefit people past their child bearing age > factor into human evolution?

To oversimplify a bit, you can think of most mutations as neutral, in terms of reproductive fitness. People (and populations) accumulate them all the time, just by chance. Occasionally, one that was previous neutral becomes beneficial when the environment changes - say, when it confers immunity to a virus, or helps with synthesizing an amino acid that's in short supply. This is why having a big population with lots of variation is beneficial and why bottlenecks hurt the viability of a species.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if one of the major pharma companies will develop an anti-dementia drug from this finding, and then if she (or her family) will see any of the billions in revenues they'll make.

<comment><USER12> They won't earn anything.

This might lead to discovering a receptor or metabolic pathway mechanism for attack, but the mutation isn't a part of any solution that will be distributed to patients.

This mutation is merely a suggestion for a gradient in solution space to explore.

In case you're thinking that this variant of the gene can be introduced into Alzheimers patients, that is impossible. You can't safely deactivate metabolic pathways at runtime in a single cell, much less a whole organism. And especially not in a critical organ such as the brain. And how would you introduce the new gene and ensure that the correct dosing is delivered? This type of thinking stems from a lack of familiarity with biochemistry, the molecular biology of genetics, and cell physiology.

<comment><USER2> You must not be familiar with the drug Onasemnogene abeparvovec. This is administered for spinal muscular atrophy patients. Patiens with SMA have a mutation in their SMN1 gene which causes decreased SMN protein.

Onasemnogene abeparvovec is a biologic drug consisting of AAV9 virus capsids that contains a SMN1 transgene along with synthetic promoters. Upon administration, the AAV9 viral vector delivers the SMN1 transgene to the affected motor neuron, where it leads to an increase in SMN protein.

The point is, while research innovation regarding gene therapy, CRISPR CAS9, etc takes time and money, it IS indeed possible. Your post suggests a type of thinking that stems from an abundance of ignorance.

<comment><USER13> > stems from an abundance of ignorance.

Ouch. In their defense of their 'ignorance' of gene therapy, Zolgensma was _just_ approved this spring, it's literally one of two in vivo gene therapies, and it's only approved for kids < 2, which is a developmentally special sort of group.

On the other hand, they're almost certainly correct that there's no straight path from this one patient to a therapy. For SMA, we've known about the affected genes for nearly 30 years ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2320125](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2320125)). The pathways are not totally trivial--there's some weirdness involving alternative splicing--but it's not impossible to wrap your head around what goes wrong. For AZ, we have _no_ idea. Untold amounts of blood and treasure have been sunk into the idea that plaques were the problem, and despite some promising initial data, that hasn't panned out[0]. This _is_ exciting because it suggests a new set of pathways to explore. The rest is hype and speculation: I'd be gobsmacked if there were a viable therapy in the next ten years.

[0] Or maybe not. Biogen seems to be taking yet another whack at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not paywalled - "Colombian woman's genes offer new clues to staving off Alzheimer's" \- [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/colombian-woman-s- ge...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/colombian-woman-s-genes-offer- new-clues-staving-alzheimer-s)

</comment><comment><USER15> While I'm loath to endorse any sort of widespread "big data" on our genetics, I can't help but wonder what other gems we might glean if metrics like genes and medical outcomes of everyone ever born were somehow made _safely_ available to researchers.

(Maybe some kind of decentralized and anonymized project with voluntary participants? Some googling found [https://www.labiotech.eu/features/blockchain-control- genomic...](https://www.labiotech.eu/features/blockchain-control-genomic- data/))

<comment><USER16> This can't currently be done. Taking the US as an example, if your data is in EMRs, it's possible for researchers to access your data, but it depends on what you consented to. Obtaining additional consent- for example by mailing a letter to everybody in an org's EHR system- isn't super-effective because most people don't respond to these requests.

Orgs like GA4GH are trying to change consent forms for people who voluntarily take part in research so that other researchers can pull the EMR data and aggregate it for other research. This would only apply to people in the future, we don't normally have such open consent forms right now.

Personally I think it's unlikely that large orgs would agree to decentralized systems. Instead, they would run this on a major cloud provider using standard cloud features like encryption and IAM, as well as standard de-identification techniques.

In principle, if we had a single global database of billions of patients with both high dimensional data (genomes, images) and labels (medical outcomes such as "got flu again"), a lot could be done, but researchers have to be extremely careful. Most folks aren't trained to deal with big data and will immediately attempt to do all sorts of testing that is prone to false positives (data dredging/p-hacking is very common in medical fields, and it gets worse as you have more data).

Note that ultra-large GWAS studies are being done, on datasets with millions of patients, and the results are interesting; you can explain, for example, variance of height using genomic variation data, up to a limit (height is only partially determined by our genome, as is true of effectively any large-scale coarse-grained phenotypic trait).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very clickbaity title. Suggest a change to: "Rare genetic mutation protects this woman from dementia", or something more descriptive.

<comment><USER18> We've switched to that phrase from the subtitle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yet another exception to an incurable disease. This happens all the time.

<comment><USER20> Please don't put a downer on this as it gives hope to those whose is suffering or have close one who is suffering.

<comment><USER21> Really? Please don't prick the clickbait bubble? That is the /exact/ emotion that makes us be exploited by this clickbait. And it /is/ clickbait. Bringing it back to reality is what most of us need and actually want. Being taken advantage of becuase you would literally clutch the tip of a sword as somoene drowning is just really horrible. You clutch the sword and they let it go as you've served your purpose and they couldn't stop you drowning anyway. It's _vile_.</comment></comment></comment>


Making OpenSource software more secure using Kafel and Dependency Analysis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LoopPerfect/buckaroo/issues/127 <comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a big issue in the opensource ecosystem.

It's hard to reason about the security implications of pulling in a dependency to your project.

There is not enough documentation about what OS features a library requires and what behavior should be considered as an anomaly.

Why is software hardening not an established practice?</comment>


Ask HN: For god's sake, how do I get custom social share buttons like this? - <AUTHOR>

All the good implementations of share buttons on content sites come in vertical columns, like so:
http://onforb.es/LpNp0Z (links to Forbes article)
So why the hell doesn't ShareThis.com or AddThis.com provide default vertical buttons like that?  This pisses me off cause I've been wanting to integrate this into my site for a long time, but every time I start delving into it, I find that it's going to take me forever to customize them so they fit nicely in a vertical space.
Do any of you know of a simple script that will allow me to put these social share buttons on my site in vertical form without having to go through a bunch of tedious customizations? <comment><USER2> There are many Wordpress plugins that do this (eg <http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sharebar/> or [http://www.designchemical.com/lab/demo-wordpress-slick- socia...](http://www.designchemical.com/lab/demo-wordpress-slick-social-share- buttons-plugin/) or many others ). Just copy the code and paste in your website.

</comment><comment><USER2> Oh by the way, I just visited AddThis and did you even check their site? <https://www.addthis.com/get/sharing>

They offer 3 vertical styles!</comment>


The Best PR Advice You've Never Heard, from Facebook's Head of Communications - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/The-Best-PR-Advice-Youve-Never-Heard-from-Facebooks-Head-of-Tech-Communications/

<comment><AUTHOR> An old article I keep reading once a year. A masterpiece if you ask me.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I Quit My Job? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a software developer, and I've been in the Bay Area now for a little less than two years. I first moved out here to work with a large tech company whose products I knew I wasn't passionate about, but who could give me a great job with a lot of learning. Eventually, the lack of passion got to me, and I started seeking other opportunities that more closely aligned with my beliefs. A couple months ago, I left that company and joined a small startup who is building something I believe in. I think I made a wrong decision. I'm confident now that I want to leave this company too, but I'm worried about what that means for my resume and what opinions future employers might form. Two jobs in under two years? I think I could explain, but I might not even get that chance. If I left this company, I have no idea what I would do next. What should I do?
 The software quality here is a major step down from my last company. I expected this to a certain extent, but I'm realizing now that the difference is so drastic that I don't even feel I'm learning or growing as a developer right now. There exists a complacency among the team with throwing code at the next task in the queue until "it works" and then moving on. In that regard, I feel alone in my endeavors to better the codebase, and my efforts get quickly overshadowed by the other developers because there's no management structure for aligning on a clear path to betterment. I think the problem is actually more nuanced than complacency - I think some of the developers here truly believe they're writing high quality solutions. I feel like an arrogant asshole for even having this opinion, but it worries me that I'm working with people who don't know they're just digging a deeper hole, and who will defend their ideas eternally. Maybe I'm just not good at convincing people on new ideas, but to me, that just speaks to how much more I have yet to learn, which makes me think I need to be in an environment where I'm still learning. <comment><USER2> Quit your job. Find another one. Leave your current one off your resume. Mark Suster talks about this here:

[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/04/22/never-hire- job...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/04/22/never-hire-job-hoppers- never-they-make-terrible-employees/)

"If you worked somewhere for 6 months leave it out. It's not worth it. Listing it is a negative and unless it was interning for Ted Kennedy or Ronald Reagan it's most likely a liability. A resume does not require you to list absolutely everything you've ever done. Do not lie. If asked in an interview about the gap you can simply say, "I joined a company for 6 months that was a total mistake. I regretted it. I figured I didn't accomplish enough to put it on my resume. Trying to make what I did there sound good on a resume would have been false."

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I did a 6 week stint at a largish software company. When I saw what was going on there, I couldn't get out fast enough. That doesn't feature on my resume. I was 9 months at another job. That one I did put on my resume.

Only once did I get a real sense that the interviewer was concerned about my job hopping history, but understood my reasons for leaving and at each point, I made sure to explain what I had learned from the experience and took responsibility for my role in it. Coincidentally or not, that is the job I stayed at the longest. They were filtering for candidates who would stay and grow at the company and created an environment that encouraged it.

So, if you are looking to do this, have a really good reason and be sure to take a lesson from it as well as claim responsibility if you entered the role with unrealistic expectations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm in an almost identical situation. calcsam is correct. Leave, don't put it on your resume, don't lie about it, find another job where you'll be challenged. That's what I'm doing. My rationale is that it's very difficult to fight organizational inertia from the bottom, so instead find an organization that's moving in the direction you want your career to move in.

The market is in our favor right now and my suggestion would be to take advantage of that to build up some 'career capital' (and hopefully some cash money capital) to see you through whatever's coming next.

BTW 'career capital' is a phrase I lifted from Cal Newport's "So Good They Can't Ignore You", which was an interesting read regarding passion and career development. I'd recommend it, it's pretty light reading.

</comment><comment><USER5> My question to you: "Do you believe in the product or mission of your current company?" If you do, then I would recommend against leaving at this point. You might be able to change the culture.

Most of my experience is rebuilding software that's in really deep. Often the team is reluctant to make changes. What I do is make changes anyway. But I start small. I add unit tests around existing code. I try to cover exceptional cases in those unit tests (bad input, network loss, etc). I can then say, "At least you know how component X works".

From unit tests, I branch out to refactoring code that calls that unit. Often this is changing static method calls into objects with dependency injection. While I'm at this, I unit test the changed components.

Eventually, I get the code up to higher standard. Along the way I can start to produce artifacts that I take to management. Code coverage, # of passing tests, # of failing tests, who broke the build. Team members often want to see these too. Those who still don't want change either leave or come around due to managerial pressure (a valid use of management).

You might be able to do this as well. You might not. It could be that best you can do is carve out a little fiefdom of standards sanity. If you decide to leave after your year's up, fine. You now have experience in the field with a modern tool set. If you improved the conditions, you might re-evaluate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. I'll point out though that my goal is not experience with this "modern" tool set. I'm plenty comfortable with the tool set we have, and the technology we use. It's the way in which we use it that's frustrating. My goal was to learn and continue growing as a developer, while building something I care about. I don't feel I'm getting the first part of that.

I feel as though I've been trying, in my short time here, exactly what you're suggesting here. It turns out that it has been a fairly major source of friction, because small incremental changes are really hard to float unless there is consensus on where the future of the codebase is going, which we certainly don't have. So a lot of the changes I try to "make anyway" seem to meet push-back from my team, despite my many efforts to argue for long-term goals, or even the value of the single incremental piece. The friction I mentioned surrounds this push-back, but the feeling I'm getting is that this push-back is based in an unwillingness to try new ideas. As I mentioned, maybe this is due to my lack of experience convincing people of new ideas, which makes me think I need even more to be in a learning environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Two jobs in under two years? I think I could explain, but I might not even > get that chance.

Just a note here- I agree with most other people that if you work at a place for a short while and leave, I would just leave it off your resume. You will get asked about that in interviews, and in my experience giving interviews it's a red flag when a candidate "goes negative" about a current or previous employer; even if the reasons are totally valid (which yours sound like they are) it can come off as bitter or petty in the context of an interview and should be avoided if possible. There are ways to talk about the kind of employer you're looking for without directly maligning a previous one.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll let you in on a little secret. I've worked at 5 different companies over the past 2 years. On my resume, you'll see 2.

Why do I do this? Those companies I was at for a month on short-term projects don't add any intrinsic value, aside from an additional term in my skill soup, if that. What should I say, I picked up a short term gig to pay the bills? Isn't that why we work in the first place? It's less awkward in interviews, as I don't have to explain the employment gap or what made me leave XYZ Corp.

The resume is a sales flyer. You don't get the full story. You get just enough information to get you interested enough to come in to the showroom to check the car out in person, maybe take it for a test drive.

<comment><USER8> Or you can just say you worked for 'bitshepherd consulting', where you were the 'lead developer' on projects for 'multiple clients' :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Maybe I'm just not good at convincing people on new ideas, but to me, that > just speaks to how much more I have yet to learn.

The obstacle is the way to professional development. Read up on how to sell your ideas and leadership, put those lessons into daily practice. Use this opportunity as a personal learning lab for at least another 6 months. Don't under estimate the mental game aspect here. Ultimately, quitting and moving on is easy.

<comment><USER10> Agree this could be a good approach, although maybe not necessarily suffering through six months. This is your chance to rock the boat, and get some practice selling your ideas. What do you have to lose? If it's something you care about, make an attempt to get people on board with the changes you want to make. Re-evaluate in a month and bail if people refuse to cooperate. If you voice your concerns clearly now they will at least understand why you're leaving if you do. You might be able to gain their respect without burning any bridges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> if you do not have a family commitment and visa issue, do what makes you happy.

Life is just so short. in fact, you probably only have <90,000 hours left to work for your entire life from now.

</comment><comment><USER12> How much experience do you have as a developer?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently in my second job. That large tech company was my first. Before that I was finishing my degree.</comment></comment>


Did Reddit Boss Coverage Cross a Line? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/sunday-review/did-reddit-boss-coverage-cross-a-line-ellen-pao.html <comment><USER2> Knowing what we know now, I'd say the sexism angle holds up. Pao was treated viciously during a short tenure during which she didn't do very much. She was blamed for problems that predated her, like mod support and relations, which had been going sour for years. She was blamed for things she didn't do, like firing Victoria (done by Ohanian). She was blamed for relatively mild and obvious moves to prevent abusive content on the site.

Steve Huffman was greeted as a savior when he replaced Pao. But he has been far more aggressive in curbing nasty content, and done nasty things himself, like secretly editing other users's posts directly in the database. And yet, he is still CEO. And people don't post nasty and abusive things all day about his looks, his sex life, etc.

The Ellen Pao tenure was not the Reddit community's finest hour.

<comment><USER3> Ellen Pao is not a particularly good icon if you wish to discuss sexism.

She filed a sexual harassment lawsuit over a relationship that she agreed was consensual. Once you decide to start sleeping with coworkers, you're pretty much sunk in a sexual harassment lawsuit irrespective of whether you are male, female, defending or prosecuting.

<comment><USER2> Contrary to what you might think, women do not need to comport with your ideas of how they should conduct their personal relationships, in order to expect fair and professional treatment in the workplace and the world in general.

You probably think you're making some kind of point that sexism wasn't an issue in how Pao was treated--when actually you're providing a good example of it.

<comment><USER4> His comment was specifically addressing all genders.

Irrespective, sleeping with coworkers is not a smart choice for anyone and the issue supersedes womens' right to "conduct their personal relationships."

<comment><USER2> It's honestly none of your business who she sleeps with.

And what you're implying--that because of a personal issue in her past, it was ok to harass her out the door at Reddit--is offensive and a classic tactic against women in the workplace.

How many coworkers has Huffman slept with during his career? You don't know, because it never comes up, because he's a white guy. But we know that in his actual job as CEO as Reddit, he has abused users' trust in the system for his own benefit; but apparently Pao is still a worse villain. The double standard stands intact.

<comment><USER4> This is beyond Pao, recognize that.

People may have sexual-liberty, just as they may have the freedom of speech. But, freedom from consequences is not guaranteed under these liberties.

If you sleep with the boss (man or woman) or a co-worker (man or woman) you are putting team dynamics in jeopardy. Likewise, if you openly bash your place of employment and revel in hate speech, you are putting the company's image in jeopardy.

I'm not fond of the SJW rhetoric, but I will acknowledge it when it contains rational arguments. Using the guise of liberty to mask irresponsibility is not a rational or useful argument.

<comment><USER5> Couldn't agree with this more

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From everything I read about it, Pao was hired (knowingly or not) as a scapegoat. Reddit had started to get a bad rap in the media due to certain sections of the community (eg. /r/fatpeoplehate, various racist subreddits) and had been told by investors that they had to clean up their image. So they hired Pao, had her make the changes (banning a few obnoxious subs, updating site code of conduct), and then fired her (without rolling back the changes) to appease the more vocal members of the community.

<comment><USER7> Catering to the lowest common denominator is a large reason why the quality of news networks have tanked in the last decade. Why wouldn't the same drop in quality occur with Reddit?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, OP here. I don't really care about Pao, but posted this again because of the details it provides on how the NYT operates in general. In particular, there's this paragraph:

"I often hear from readers that they would prefer a straight, neutral treatment — just the facts. But The Times has moved away from that, reflecting editors' reasonable belief that the basics can be found in many news outlets, every minute of the day. They want to provide "value-added" coverage."

If there was a good post analyzing this, with lots of links to primary sources, without getting bogged down in other distractions, I would've posted that instead. But I unfortunately haven't seen one yet.

<comment><USER8> Yes, this frank description of NYTimes' journalistic philosophy is vastly more important than the Pao controversy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Personally, I'm of the opinion that their coverage did cross a line.

The coverage of Pao's ouster in general crossed all kinds of lines.

We now know that most of the public ill-will towards her was completely unfounded. It's the nature of internet media in general. Everybody wants to be first. Being correct and balanced are nice-to-haves that I'm not sure any media outlet cares about anymore. This goes for online and other media. Even journals target studies with eye catching headlines.

This all goes to problems with advertising revenue. Page views and clicks generate revenue almost blindly. End users are engaging not based on trust or value, but based on common themes. It's not sustainable, and if it is sustainable it's not right.

The same goes for VC money. I suppose _most_ investment money has been forever broken because they target generic measurable milestones and not quality or long term sustainability which is difficult to truly analyze. I suppose that's why most big silicon valley companies are housed in the shells of former big silicon valley companies. I'm stereotyping here, and yc could very well be much different, but this is definitely an impression that I have. I've never gone after VC money myself, so I could be off base by a long shot.

</comment><comment><USER10> No idea why this is being upvoted here now, but it is a reminder of all the internet culture wars that I think had a big effect on the lead up to Trump's victory. Agree or not it is an amazing revolution. The young male gamer culture won.

<comment><USER11> I thought Trump voters skewed older.

<comment><USER12> They do, but he has a very vocal base among young people (much more vocal than young people for Clinton).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a community of screaming angry children (not an insult, I mean literal teenagers and younger) who've got some sort of persecution complex and complain often about "censorship". Almost uniformly, the work of these people is not useful to anyone but them. And it is only useful to them in a sort of self gratifying perpetuation of their beliefs coupled with outrage.

If you're an individual, I would advise steering clear of these groups. It's not productive to be a member.

I think it's today's variant of the BSD v GPL, or Linux v Microsoft flame wars. It's an addictive thing to participate in. You have a team and you strongly present membership and identity.

It's less about the principles behind it and more about which principles you can bring to serve your identity as part of the group membership.

For an individual, this is a mental trap. You expend a great deal of effort on identification and none on being better. It's not worth it.

I think the Ellen Pao thing was one of these identity rites. She was the opposite, and things others could be forgiven for would be heinous crimes if she'd done them.

<comment><USER7> An us-vs-them mentality definitely amplified the outrage, but it began for legitimate purposes. Reddit really was a bastion of free speech in its early days, which was fantastic because people with thoughts that didn't align with the PC culture could find a place they liked. The community was afraid the changes implemented by Pao would be a slippery slope to conforming to the mainstream PC culture and reacted accordingly. And looking at how Reddit has changed in the last few years, I would say those fears were not unfounded in the least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My favorite part is the section at the bottom that says,

> A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 19, 2015, on Page SR9 of > the New York edition with the headline: Did Reddit Boss Coverage Cross a > Line?

I wonder if the Times even modified this Op-Ed between print and web!

<comment><USER15> That's some automatically generated text footer, it's common on NYT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is news again why?

<comment><USER17> Without questioning the appropriateness of the story, I would be interested in hearing from OP what prompted the re-posting.

HN's front page is as HN's front page does....

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694142)

<comment><USER17> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Freeman Dyson – Birds and Frogs (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/birds-and-frogs <comment><USER2> I have yet to see something from Dyson that wasn't worth reading, assuming I had the background to handle it.

<comment><USER3> My fave is his memoir _Disturbing the Universe_. HN types would probably especially like the chapters on 'startups' he worked on: the TRIGA nuclear reactor and the Orion nuclear rocket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a way to view this offline?

EDIT [https://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200212p.pdf](https://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200212p.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. It is very interesting to note that Freeman Dyson considers Von Neumann to be a frog rather than a bird.

Considering Neumann's wide ranging, and prodigious work, I always thought of him as a superman who could survey the entire landscape of mathematics. Dyson does give some persuasive reasons why this may not be true.

2\. Dyson reminds me of Isaiah Berlin's THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX essay: [https://www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk/crag/files/2016/06/the_hedgeh...](https://www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk/crag/files/2016/06/the_hedgehog_and_the_fox- berlin.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> The birds and frogs distinction is interesting, but seems to be a false dichotomy to me. Ideally a researcher is both a bird and a frog. I try to be. And unfortunately many researchers probably aren't either. In my own subfield I can think of many contributions which lack either depth or breadth.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe if FD gets a PhD he will be able to understand global warming.

Look, I'm not suggesting we abandon contrarianism as entertainment altogether, amusements are sacred constructs of great power and beauty, but as a system of philosophy, a guiding force to live your life ?

Give me a fucking break.</comment>


The iPad is about to steamroll into the Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://ipadwatcher.com/2010/09/07/the-ipad-is-about-to-steamroll-into-the-enterprise/ <comment><USER2> I guess I'll believe it when I see it. "The enterprise" is a fairly amorphous term, but most enterprises I've worked in either didn't have a wireless network you could connect to (for security reasons) or made you go through a process with each device that would make a colo-rectal surgeon blush. Enterprise IT want to lock down and control things (usually un-necessarily IMO), and I don't think the iPad exposes enough knobs and dials for them to feel comfortable with it. The bottom line (once again, based on my experience) is that enterprise IT departments don't care about the productivity of the people they 'support' - I wrote this post about it a while back [http://jcooney.net/post/2010/06/30/The-IT-Department- doesne2...](http://jcooney.net/post/2010/06/30/The-IT-Department- doesne28099t-Care-about-your-Productivity.aspx)

<comment><USER3> The iPad has support for enterprise wifi networks and works very well with Exchange. It is about as enterprise-friendly (without being MS) as you can get.

<comment><USER4> Yes, in fact the native iPad Cisco IPSec VPN has a much quicker sign-on time than OS X version of the client from Cisco.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's pretty exciting to see the iPad coming to the enterprise. I've heard that the company I work for released them to executives a few weeks ago, and it sounds like we're not alone. What's really exciting though is how the enterprise desktop space is on the edge of some big changes.

In the past, workers sat in one location and worked in a predictable pattern for a set amount of time. Workers weren't very comfortable with technology and needed major support. Moreover, work was pretty task-oriented -- it could be modeled with workflow very easily.

The environment of today is quite a contrast. The location and work hours of users are definitely not predictable. Furthermore, assistance and limited options from the IT department can get in the user's way sometimes. Also, knowledge workers spend a lot of time doing unstructured work -- analysis, brainstorming, design -- which is something that is hard to model.

Clearly, the old model for desktop has to change. I don't think we can throw a few departmental applications with a heap of productivity applications at people and call it a job well done. The iPad's introduction into the enterprise is a start that signifies different kinds of devices can be helpful. Desktop virtualization and the cloud probably have a role to play in all this too. For sure, I'll be interested to see how it all plays out.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know if it's gonna steamroll, but the senior mgmt at my enterprise workplace are twisting arms in the IT department to get iPads OK'd. The problem for IT is that we already have the infrastructure to support Blackberrys, so it would be a pain to also support iOS. Hopefully Rim will hurry up with their tablets.

<comment><USER7> It's more of a pain to support Blackberry. You need a dedicated server. With iOS you just turn on Activesync on your Exchange server, and give your users the DNS name and let them go to town.

<comment><USER8> If Apple are serious about this, they are going to have to provide some better management tools for enterprise. Being able to manages devices remotely is incredibly important, and an easy way to install apps is necessary.

I sure hope Apple are reading this blog, <http://speirs.org/>, where the IT guy is using iPads throught a school in Scotland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Enterprises I work with IE the Government, won't allow Apple in their product line at all. Why you ask, because they are a closed system. Android on the other side they will definitely use and have started to.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely - as a business owner I want the complete ability to customize things and deploy whatever apps on there that do whatever I want, whenever I want. I don't want nobody telling me what to do. And no, requiring 500 employees or using 90 day ad hoc deployment is not nearly satisfactory. Not to mention that your average enterprise has a bajillion lines of java code that, it just so happens (with the exception of UI, obviously), runs nearly without modification on Android.

One thing I am hoping for (and looking forward to) is a 2nd wave of Android devices which are dedicated special purpose tools. At some point cheap hardware that runs Android is going to become so pervasive that it will start showing up in everything from desk calculators to portable POS applications to medical devices. The attraction of being able to take the raw source code and specialize it for whatever task you have at hand while leveraging the huge Android ecosystem is amazing. This has yet to happen but I really hope it will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> New canon printers come with a app to print directly from iPad and iPhone over wireless network which is truly like magic to use even though the underlying tech is so widespread at this point.

Edit - app is called iEpp on AppStore if u r interested</comment>


The Story of the HTML5 Shiv « Paul Irish - <AUTHOR> http://paulirish.com/2011/the-history-of-the-html5-shiv/ <comment><USER2> Could anyone explain what the difference is between a shim and a shiv?

<comment><USER3> It's really a shim; I suppose they may have called it a shiv (prison slang for "improvised knife") to be able to talk about putting a shiv into IE...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice book plug. I'm reminded of the old CSS Box Model hack for earlier versions of IE.

For those not already familiar, Paul is the maintainer of HTML5 Boilerplate: <http://html5boilerplate.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Not directly related, but play around with Paul's site. Lots of little hidden goodies there.</comment>


Potential NVIDIA/Intel settlement could mean good news for Apple - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/12/potential-nvidiaintel-settlement-could-mean-good-news-for-apple.ars <comment><USER2> This would be good news for anybody who wants a laptop with good graphics (at least until AMD can ship a great mobile Fusion chip, which isn't likely to happen anytime soon).

What I don't understand is why, given the hardball Intel has been playing, I haven't seen much reference to NVidia's GPU related patents before this. We know that there are a lot of patent holders other than AMD and NVidia complicating things, but it would seem that after all these years, NVidia has got to have at least a few killer patents of their own. With Intel trying to make their agreement completely one-sided, why hasn't NVidia been threatening to cancel the agreement completely and use their GPU patents to get a C&D order against Intel's flagship consumer CPUs?</comment>


Ask HN: I know software. Now I want to know hardware. Where do I start? - <AUTHOR>

I started with RoR 6 months ago and I can do cool stuff with that now (www.Meer.li for example).
I really want to go into hardware now, but I have no idea where to start.
Let's say I want to create a speaker system you can hook up to your iPhone - similar to this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2107726947/hidden-radio-and-bluetooth-speaker?ref=live. Where would you start? <comment><USER2> As other's have mentioned I'd suggest that you start with an Arduino. It simplifies a lot of the complexities of embedded development while still been surprisingly powerful. You'll want to start by learning the basics: How to control the general purpose IO (GPIO) pins, basic serial communication, analog to digital converters (ADC), digital to analog converters (DAC), etc.

The Arduino is a nice platform for beginners because it provides a nice set of libraries that abstract away a lot of the complexities of developing embedded systems. If you're just interested in building hardware for a hobby the Arduino may satisfy all your needs. But, if you're interested in actually developing products to sell I'd recommend that you quickly move from the Arduino to some more serious hardware. This isn't to say you can't make real products with an Arduino; I know there are projects like the Makerbot that use it to great success. But I think by just using an Arduino you run the risk of learning a framework rather than having a comprehensive understanding of the interaction between the software and hardware.

After Arduino I'd recommend getting a development board such as: [http://www.actel.com/products/hardware/devkits_boards/smartf...](http://www.actel.com/products/hardware/devkits_boards/smartfusion_eval.aspx). One of the classes I took in college used these boards and they're pretty awesome. They have an ARM microcontroller and FPGA on a single chip. If you're not familiar with FPGAs check out the wikipedia article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array>. Basically they enable you to implement digital logic through software using a Hardware Descriptor Language (HDL). Usually the manufacturer will also provide you with premade IP cores you can drop in. These are things like ADC converters, controllers for SPI or I2C, etc. You can also get crazy though and design custom chips even a complete general purpose processor and test it out on the FPGA.

Hopefully this helps. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll try to answer them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your going the wrong direction. Bluetooth and iPhones are highly advanced hardware systems. It would be like teaching someone who knows nothing about programming by dropping them in the middle of a complex software API and hope they can figure things out from there.

Start with a microcontroller AND a FPGA or it's simpler CPLD cousin of some type. Learn how to use both of them and understand what your doing with both of them. Look up the Altair! You know, the world's first PC. Find stuff that was popular in the beginning of the computer age. See how hardware Pong was made. Try and see if you can recreate it on that microcontroller. After that, see if you can recreate it on the CPLD. It will you some idea about what your about to embark on.

From there, try taking on a communication protocol. Ask around for something simple you can learn in a month.

By this time you will hopefully have enough knowledge to give Bluetooth a shot and then see exactly how big a divide there is between the hardware and software world and how much stuff was "hidden" from your view.

Good Luck

</comment><comment><USER4> I've always wanted to get an Arduino myself.

I also have an excellent book, it's very simple to understand if you follow it linearly, and it definitely starts from the "bottom, up."

[http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Elements_of_Computin...](http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Elements_of_Computing_Systems.html?id=THie6tt-2z8C)

(The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles; Nisan and Schocken)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks cool. I'll take a look at it :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> These SparkFun tutorials were a pretty good starting point for me: <http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/category/1>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks awesome. Do you have any other tutorials like this? Maybe even some projects people made? Kind of like all the example apps on Github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Arduino!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an answer I can understand :-). Where would you start with Arduino then? Any links?

<comment><USER7> <http://wiring.org.co/learning/tutorials/index.html>

<http://fritzing.org/learning/tutorials/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome... thanks. Is there any well known forums for hardware hackers. Like StackOverflow, just for Hardware?

<comment><USER8> There is electronics.stackexchange.com, but it's probably a bit premature at this point.

When you say you "want to learn hardware" how much do you want to learn? Saying you started with RoR and showing that speaker thing as an end project, I'll assume you want to start at a pretty high level.

The easy, inexpensive way of putting together high level "hardware building blocks" is Arduino. Head over to SparkFun or adafruit Industries and find lots of beginning hardware hackers in their forums. You'll get all the help you want there.

For a more HelloWorld.c approach, if you want to learn digital (let's ignore analog for now) electronics at a more elemental level, I'd say purchase a breadboard, a handful of CMOS chips and passive components (or get a kit from Make) and flash an LED, or make some electronic music and experiment from there.

One way isn't "better" than the other; they just approach the problem from different viewpoints.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to learn enough to be able to create what I want to create. So if I have an idea for a speaker for Mac-devices, then I want to be able to do it or have the knowledge, so I know what I need to learn to do it.

Starting doing back-end development can be a bit of a challenge. How much of a challenge do you think it is to start with Hardware, compared to that?

<comment><USER8> "Hardware" is such an open ended subject that the question can't be answered reasonably. Hardware encompasses everything from interplanetary spacecraft communications to electrical power generation and then some.

Again, it depends on what you want to do. Just like software, electrical engineering has many specialties and sub-specialties. You can build things from individual basic components (think of this as assembly or C programming) or wire modules together (CRUD plumbing).

I don't know the first thing about Macs but if I assume you mean that you want to be able to connect external speakers to the line-level audio output of a Mac, you should understand the basics of wiring and building circuits. Pehaps look online for an LM386 project. Not much theory involved in doing it that way, just learning how to read schematic diagrams and solder circuits.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does anyone have any *GOOD* arguments against Compatibilism? - <AUTHOR> I am drawing a blank on this one. Someone guide me, please.<p>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism <comment><USER2> The problem with Compatibilism is that free will and determinism can't co- exist, its an either or. If you believe in determinism then your will was never free, was it?

The Buddha says that free will is perfectly possible provided you have the strength and perseverance of controlling your mind which is like a drunken monkey. As long as you don't do that, you are at the mercy of the whims of your subconscious mind which is constantly conditioned by your Karma and thus your will is never truly free.

<comment><AUTHOR> So I _am_ that drunken monkey after all? I was getting a bit lonely, you know. HMMM. On second thought, it sounds like it's better to _not_ be the drunken monkey?

<comment><USER2> Don't worry dude, we are all drunken monkeys unless we have achieved nirvana and those are extremely rare!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for replying to all my comments btw. I was going through a bit of an existential crisis! (a little one!) May I ask why your username is the_matrix? Are you a philosopher/read in philosophy? Have you read any Jean Baudrillard? Would love to chat some more. My email is in my about me! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recruiters, what non-technical questions do you ask? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Need a little clarification on that one..."technically" every question a Recruiter asks, which isn't related to a technical question, is non-technical ;)

If we aren't discussing the difference between OOP and functional programming, and in what situation you would use one of the other, I'm always interested in what sort of projects an Engineer/Developer is involved with outside of work...whether being a part of a large open source project, machine learning, arduino/raspi, etc. We look for people who are passionate about working with tech.

</comment><comment><USER3> Non-native English speakers are usually assessed on the quality of English they speak and are asked how comfortable they feel presenting or talking in public. Even for roles that require no evangelizing, communication ability and team fit is key and correlates heavily with one's ability to communicate in a friendly manner.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm always afraid someone is going to ask "describe a time when you had a conflict with a coworker and how you resolved it", because the answer is usually something like "that didn't really happen much" or "I stoically did their work for them and try to avoid tasks that involve dealing with them again."

</comment><comment><USER5> Not a recruiter, but I look for questions that dont have a right answer but show how they think. Eg "Is it better to deliver work better to be perfect and late or on time and less than perfect".</comment>


Local Minima, Saddle Points, and Plateaus - <AUTHOR> http://www.theorangeduck.com/page/local-minima-saddle-points-plateaus <comment><USER2> This made me think about code. I've long thought of incremental refactoring as "following the gradient" of good design principles, but this essay opened up new connections for me.

For example, I've heard elsewhere that great programmers possess the skill of being able to decompose large changes into smaller commits, making the code no worse as they go. Having the ability to see the small changes that get you where you want to go corresponds to finding the direction of change that gets you past the saddle point.

Random restart is a standard tool in the kit of stochastic gradient descent. But if local minima are rare, it may be overused. You don't have to rewrite your code if you can see the refactors and gradual improvements that get you where you need to go.

</comment><comment><USER3> I enjoyed this article. It got me thinking that one of the problems in life is that the loss function is unknown: we don't always know beforehand what would make us happy or satisfied. However, it's a lot easier to gauge one's current gradient: whether things are getting better or worse, or stagnant, as in plateau.

<comment><USER4> Life is reinforcement learning, the reward signal is dopamine :)

<comment><USER5> Side effects may include an opioid epidemic :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just wish they would say "minimum" when they mean minimum.

In real high-dimensional spaces, like life, exploring away from local minima and plateaus ("plateaux"?) is expensive. Figuring in the expense of exploration distorts the reward function intriguingly.

</comment><comment><USER7> This translates well into advice for startups: Don't obsess over finding the perfect solution, but focus on getting _something_ then making constant improvements to what you have. Don't try to jump to a global optimum straight away. There are always a huge number of options to choose from, and you can always improve.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love this analogy. There's a great lesson here in assuming the saddle point case and trying to eke out the additional gains you know could be close by.

The tricky part in real life is figuring out the dimensionality and then reasoning about how changes in the gradient of one dimension appear to affect changes in the gradient of another.

</comment><comment><USER9> While I believe to understand the general idea behind the theory as applied to real life, I'm struggling with a few concepts.

What are local minima, in relation to the real life? Are those the "places", mentally speaking, where one feels like they're failing?

What, exactly, are saddle points in this context?

<comment><USER10> > _What are local minima, in relation to the real life? Are those the > "places", mentally speaking, where one feels like they're failing?_

They are places where you're doing OK but can't seem to make progress to "better than OK" by moving a little away from them (e.g. for many steps away from that situation, things are getting worse -- you need to travel a lot to get out of the "pit" you're in).

Consider someone obese. They feel worse when doing exercize/diet (compared to e.g. munching a pizza), but the feelings they have are not the best they could have related to their weight situation -- they'd feel best if they could persevere and eventually feel fit/healthy.

Saddle points are those where you can't seem to make easy progress on one direction (one aspect, e.g. how you feel about your health) but you can on another (e.g. how much money you make).

It's a little more involved (because if you're obese you're always best to lose, whereas a function can try both increasing and decreasing values to get out of a local minimum) but that's the gist I think.

<comment><USER9> Thank you.

I'm still having trouble visualizing it, though. I reckon it's the kind of an idea where, if you don't give me a clear-enough image, I'm stuck no matter how well you pick your words others.

Not to put any kind of pressure on you, of course. I'm grateful for the explanation. It's my brain that does its tricks.</comment></comment></comment>


LogDNA (YC W15) – Logging in the cloud raises 1.3M from Skype co-founder - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/07/20/logdna-raises-1-3-million-to-help-engineers-better-manage-their-servers/ <comment><USER2> Hey! Lee here (CTO / co-founder) wanted to say thanks for all the feedback when we launched in February. We're constantly adding new features weekly and if there's anything we can help with, I'm happy to answer any questions!</comment>


Ask HN: Free Mac Malware Remover? - <AUTHOR> I downloaded some torrent and now my Mac's default search engine changed and idk what more malware has done to my pc. Do you guys know of any free malware remover toolkit or antivirus which can remove this malware. <comment><USER2> Why don't you simply put back the most recent backup?

<comment><USER3> I'd reinstall the whole thing at least. Wipe the whole drive and then restore the last clean backup. Do a clean reinstall and restore a clean backup on top of that. Good luck dudes.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there an official/unofficial list of Google search's features? - <AUTHOR> I'm talking about stuff like, searching a word to get its definition + pronunciation, searching "IP address" to get your IP address, and other esoteric stuff. <comment><USER2> Check out their advanced search:

[https://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en&fg=1](https://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en&fg=1)</comment>


Sync G+ posts to Identica/Twitter/FB by simply sharing a post with this G+ bot - <AUTHOR> http://gplus.sagg.im

<comment><USER2> As much as I like the idea of only having to post something in one place to have it shared with people I think part of the reason I really like Google+ is because all of the content that is being shared there is original. Buzz was all about integrating your other feeds. G+ is doing very well by making people post original items.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Anybody posting their Twitter stream of consciousness to G+ is going to get unfollowed. When I want that, I read Twitter.

Btw, in Buzz, you can unsub from a person's Twitter in-stream. RHS dropdown has "mute Twitter posts from X".

<comment><USER4> _Anybody posting their Twitter stream of consciousness to G+ is going to get unfollowed._

I routinely post anything I want to be publicly visible to Twitter. It's then forwarded to Facebook, LinkedIn and (soon) G+. If I want something visible only to my friends, I post it to FB (I keep the friend list there tidy) - hopefully I'll be able to forward those to my "Friends" and "Family" circles on G+.

I don't want to maintain yet another stream whenever there's a new social network thing going on. OTOH, I don't post my "stream of consciousness" to Tw, I try to use it as a broadcast medium. I am annoyed by "today I had X for lunch" type posts, be they on Tw, FB or G+.

<comment><USER3> I have a few friends who are linked to me on FB, Buzz, Twitter and LinkedIn. Issue is that I get the same messages in every medium and most of the time, they're not worth seeing 4 times :) I figure if someone wants my Twitter posts they'll follow me on Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am wary of bots after Wave. The vibe of a conversation went downhill really quick.

I question too the utility of duplicating your posts twice. It's really hard to get it right without multiple overlapping groups of people seeing the same content twice. Plus the resulting fragmentation of discussion as well.

<comment><USER6> What happened with bots on Wave?

Is posting on two services really worse than posting only on one? At least people who are on one but not the other will get to see the post. Until G+ and FB make peace and inter-operate, this can't really be helped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not having any luck using AgentG in a circle to share, it always has to be shared directly with AgentG. i know there is a note about this during setup, but it seems to encourage you to add AgentG to a circle for regular use. This doesn't seem to work.

<comment><USER6> I had the same experience. Also, embedding Youtube videos doesn't work. I only get text but not the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's also a chrome extension called StartGooglePlus that will do this without having to use a bot.

</comment><comment><USER9> It sounds cool, but I'm wary. Does anyone know who's behind this / what their track record is?

</comment><comment><USER10> damn, they stole my idea :)</comment>