Watch the Olympics from anywhere: this actually works - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/3195652

<comment><USER2> As I've said in other comments. This is fun and hackerish but it's cheaper and simpler to just sign up for a VPN for a month that has UK gateways. Like <https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/> for $6.95

<comment><USER3> That's what I've been using and it works great. Some of their US nodes are slow, probably because overloaded, but I maxed out my 20 Mbit internet connection testing their UK London server.

Edit: I should also point out that a $20 Linode box just for VPN is overkill. If you really want to go the VPS route, there are plenty of sub-$10 VPS providers in the UK.

<comment><USER2> If you email me at firstname.lastname@example.com I can try to help figure out why you get slow speeds on some of our US servers. None of our servers are even running near capacity.

<comment><USER4> It would have been good courtesy to declare your affiliation with this company in your original comment

<comment><USER2> Yea I should have. I guess I forgot to because I had already done so in these other comments [1] and wrongly assumed everyone had read them as well. Anyway, I'm the cofounder of said service.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4307364> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4307380>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really wish I could just subscribe to iPlayer. I don't want to subscribe to a cable or satellite service that I wouldn't use (and then pay extra for BBC channels), and I like a lot of their content. I'd gladly pay the BBC money for easy, legal online access to it.

<comment><USER6> I'd like to see this happen just so that British taxes aren't being spent providing free coverage to people in other countries.

<comment><USER7> If they wanted to do that they'd need to have global streaming rights, which would cost much much much much more than the marginal bandwidth taken up by the fraction of users with the tech savvy to set up a proxy.

<comment><USER8> Who exactly would the BBC have to pay for "global streaming rights" to content they already own?

<comment><USER9> In this particular instance, the IOC.

<comment><USER10> I think the OP meant access to regular BBC programming; not the Olympic coverage.

<comment><USER9> While the Beeb does produce a lot of its own programming, there is also much of it that is done in partnership with other public broadcasters outside of the UK and with corporate bodies who have distribution rights (which are a part of copyright) outside of the UK, whether those rights are exercised or not. The BBC having distribution rights in the UK does not automatically grant them rights to distribute outside of the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Or you can just tunnel through the ssh connection to your VM, I do this all the time to watch BBC.

        ssh -D 9050 [user]@[vm.ip]

You now have a SOCKS proxy on port 9050. Done!

<comment><USER12> while you can easily set a SOCKS proxy for your browser, flash will still use your normal connection.

<comment><USER13> Which is more efficient if the sites don't care where the flash connection comes from (like, apparently, the BBC)

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, the Flash BBC iPlayer will _not_ work if it connects from the United States. Additionally, I discovered that the BBC is using Akamai for streaming their live content, and Akamai's United States servers do not have the content. So even if you convince the BBC that you're in England, but talk to Akamai servers in the US, the content does not stream.

Interestingly, BBC is using Limelight for pre-recorded content, and that content is apparently cached globally.

<comment><USER13> I never tried the live streams - the time difference was inconvenient enough.

Live content gets licensed differently to the catch-up content, which you can view without paying the license fee. Given catch-up is usually more restricted (some programmes unavailable for example) I imagine the only reason Limelight is globally accessible is because that's the default mode of operation and the iPlayer website is considered a sufficient region restriction mechanism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Or you could just use the unlimited TunnelBear VPN for $5 a month.

<comment><AUTHOR> And potentially send sensitive traffic through an untrusted third party. Some people are comfortable with that, some people aren't.

<comment><USER15> You can disconnect from the VPN after you're done watching.

<comment><AUTHOR> All of the UK-endpoint VPN providers I considered were sketchy in one way or another, and most of them had very poor speeds from the UK to the US. A VPN connection usually bypasses your local firewall too, depending on configuration, which means you really, really have to trust the people running your VPN service, and trust that they isolated their customers from each other. Linode, on the other hand, is a well-respected company with extremely good connectivity (I get 160ms pings from San Diego, CA and more than 30mbit/s transfer). And I know the guy who is running my VPN service on Linode: me.

If you're the kind of person who gladly exchanges security and privacy for $10 to $15, then those other options are for you.

<comment><USER16> And how do you determine that Linode is more trustworthy than TunnelBear?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure about the legalities abroad but in the UK at least it's illegal to watch this stream without a TV licence and they do try and prosecute people if they can find an address attached to your IP, obviously this isn't possible through this method but just a heads up.

Another option which doesn't require a tv licence is TVCatchup.com which legally streams UK TV channels (to the UK only).

Although I will say the BBC interface is far better and allows you to go back to the start if you press play on the live player half way through and of course is ad free.

Regardless, I condone this as NBC should allow everyone to watch online live and if they don't people will go to better alternatives.

<comment><USER18> > they do try and prosecute people if they can find an address attached to > your IP

How? Will the ISPs actually just hand those out?

<comment><USER17> They do a surprising amount, they seriously have vans that drive around scanning to see if you're watching television on a physical TV and if so if you don't have a licence they'll fine you

I'm not sure if they are actually finding out if you have a TV licence on the stream yet but I wouldn't be surprised if they are/do.

<comment><USER18> The effectiveness of detector vans is an urban myth.

The only confirmed tactics is requiring stores selling TVs to collect the address of the buyer and knocking on the doors of people not paying the licence in the assumtion that they actually have a TV.

<comment><USER8> They drove a very obvious looking "detector van" around near our university halls for a few days, and a few days later every person that had a TV and no license got a letter, got scared, and paid up.

Of course, everyone that had no TV and no license also got a letter... and so did everyone that already had a TV license!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If I don't care about watching it live, can I just get the recording in a torrent?

<comment><USER20> Sure, the opening ceremony has more than 8000 seeds: <http://torrentz.eu/search?f=olympics>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I did something similar to watch hulu from Canada awhile back but I had split tunnelling disabled where all traffic goes through the vpn so no messing around with static routes and ips. Also setup a local DNS cache on the VPS and configured openvpn to use the VPS DNS cache when connected. CDN's generally use the ip of the DNS request to determine where to direct your browser to download the media, static host entries would avoid the DNS request though. I no longer have it setup, but I do have my config backed up somewhere. If someone's interested I'll look for it.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you're in europe you can watch it live at NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), but the commentary will ofcourse be in Norwegian. NRK has excellent coverage, with 7 (9 including NRK1 and NRK2) dedicated channels.

See more: [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnrk.no%2Fol2012%2Fnyheter%2Fslik- ser-du-ol-pa-nrk-i-utlandet-1.8257380)

</comment><comment><USER23> Works great. This way you don't have to send all your traffic through the VPN, only the requests that are used to geolocate you.

You can use the same method to bypass MLB.tv blackout restrictions.

Instead of a Linode box, I use a privatetunnel.com VPN (free starter available) and modify the config:

      route-nopull # (to avoid sending all traffic through)
      route outbound-ip netmask # ex: route 184.108.40.206 255.255.255.0

</comment><comment><USER24> I found this resource to be helpful in actually getting the routes working. In particular, setting up NAT to forward traffic from the VPN to the outside world:

[https://library.linode.com/networking/openvpn/ubuntu-10.10-m...](https://library.linode.com/networking/openvpn/ubuntu-10.10-maverick#sph_configuring- the-virtual-private-network)

</comment><comment><USER25> Or just sign up for a distance learning course from a UK university. Aberdeen gives you a proxy, the OU as far as I know, doesn't.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If the BBC changes their IP addresses and I haven't updated the IP list, you can simply adjust your VPN client settings to route all traffic over the VPN connection. Viscosity makes this easy. That will always work, but will cause other Internet services to think you're in England, and make things feel a bit slower overall.

</comment><comment><USER26> The same thing that the people need to access "How I need your mother".

After a few years, the easiest solution is to just buy a prxoy. Normally cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER27> I reckon it'll just be a matter of time until the BBC start blocking traffic from IP ranges that look like VPS hosting companies.

<comment><USER28> Hopefully this method won't become too mainstream since it requires some hacking.</comment></comment>


James Damore and three others end Google suit - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-09/ex-google-engineer-who-became-right-wing-hero-quietly-ends-suit <comment><USER2> Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with what he said) and just appreciate that he made a mess.

As has been said before, if your CEO learns your name for the same reason he has to end his vacation early, you probably should start polishing up your resume.

<comment><USER3> He never released anything to the public. Someone who didn't like his political views leaked it to Twitter and the press.

If I were him, I would have personally sued the person that leaked the content and continued the fight until they had no money left. They really need to be taught a lesson that it's not okay to do something like this with the intention of destroying a person's life.

<comment><USER4> .. so you'd destroy their life instead?

<comment><USER5> Always assume that what you say could be on the front page of the New York Times.

<comment><USER6> Engineering is where most of the people go who care more about being right than about what people think of them. There is a reason for that - it usually matters if an approach is right or not in engineering work. Companies like Google need to be able to roll their eyes when engineers start stupid arguments, not sack them. The front-page rule is a technical impediment to people being able to figure out facts. The path to the truth often leads through patches of believing things that are wrong.

Charging into a room trying to start an argument isn't the best way to work out what is true; but there are young engineers who are going to try it because they are under a lot of pressure to be technically correct and not under a lot of pressure to be socially savvy. They're in the process of learning that it isn't politically feasible.

Even a full blown "Engineer holds crackpot opinion!" should never be front page news unless it is a risk of a building fallen down. Let alone "Young Engineer tries to start a Stupid Argument".

<comment><USER7> This wasn't emacs vs vi.

Damore's goal was to materially affect who got hired and how they were treated. That's quite a lot of people, and at one of the world's most prominent companies. Nobody can reasonably expect that he should be able to play at that level and have it be consequence-free when it doesn't go his way.

Damore is welcome to _have_ crackpot opinions. He's even welcome to _express_ crackpot opinions on his own time. But what he was doing was vigorous workplace activism. Activism that not only contradicted the goals of Google execs and the bulk of its employees, but was carried out in a way that actively damaged ongoing Google efforts and caused a significant workplace disruption.

You could argue that Google's management made a mistake in allowing a young engineer this much power in the first place. Or by not reining him in earlier. But rolling their eyes was never an option here because Damore was having a significant negative effect on the company.

<comment><USER8> Google _solicited_ the feedback. This is the problem: companies want it both ways. An open culture where people tell the truth about what they think (so that you don't get the brilliantly dysfunctional organizations that suck up huge amounts of money in lost efficiency) but none of the messy discomfort that comes from people actually disagreeing in an open society.

<comment><USER7> I've never worked at Google, so I can't say for sure. But from what I hear, there's plenty of disagreement. And Google may have generally asked for feedback. But I'm pretty sure they didn't say, "Hey, James, could you write a maximally divisive political opinion piece attacking a bunch of important internal efforts and implying that anybody who doesn't agree with you is just a villain in an Ayn Rand novel?"

<comment><USER9> They said "please share your opinion on this specific topic [the low proportion of women in engineering]." Regardless of how you color his response, they asked for exactly what he gave.

<comment><USER7> Could you point me to your source for that quote?

I'm not coloring his response when I call it a divisive political opinion piece. It's explicitly framed as "the politics of the majority of people at Google is a big problem". And whether or not their initial request technically was broad enough to include his response isn't the issue.

Either Damore was reasonably smart, and he knew that this would at best be enormously divisive. Or maybe he was just incredibly clueless. (Personally I think it was the former.) When bosses (or anybody) ask for something, technically complying with the literal meaning of their words is not enough. One has to consider goals and context, and respond accordingly.

<comment><USER10> They _expressly_ asked him to share his opinion about an extremely divisive, almost third-rail topic. You're just saying that his statement ended up being divisive as well, but that's tautological. It's simply not possible to be "politically neutral" about such a topic and say anything worthwhile.

<comment><USER7> Could you please point me to your source for the exact wording of their request?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Damore does not fit into the neat ideological right or left classification but it would be impossible for an institution like Bloomberg to have nuance on this issue. Just because some deplorable lifted him up doesn't mean he should be defined specifically on an ideological axis.

But, of course, who gives a fuck. The rage machine rages on.

<comment><USER12> But he did become an alt-right / Fox News / conservative machine darling.

<comment><USER13> You have to consider the possibility that they were the only people who he could actually talk to. Not that he wanted to be in such channels in the first place.

<comment><USER14> My first thought as well. You see liberals invited onto conservative outlets for genuine debates / opinions. Rarely see liberal outlets do the same as guilt by association, causing anyone who's ever been in the same room as an 'alt-right' to be tainted, seem to be rampant.

<comment><USER15> "genuine debates" on conservative outlets, like what? Fox News? talk radio? a dingy YouTube channel?

<comment><USER16> Can you give examples of what you consider "genuine debates" then?

I care more about the content than where it's hosted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It was a joint request to dismiss with no further comment, ie, almost certainly a settlement & a nondisclosure agreement.

<comment><USER18> I'd be curious what the agreement is if only because it didn't seem like he had much in the way of a strong with case.

<comment><USER19> Are you serious? He was fired for his political views.

<comment> ryan-c Are there protected classes based on political views?

If someone is expressing political or even religious views that are so extreme that they create a hostile work environment, I don't see an issue with firing them over it.

(I am not interested in debating whether or not Damore's views reached the "hostile work environment" threshold)

<comment><USER20> None federally. In California, "political activities" are a protected class. The extent to which activities and views overlap is almost certainly a messy question of law that I'm not qualified to answer with respect to Damore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this.

In architecture (a somewhat older profession, but also concerning things constructed by people), women previously did have a hard time, and often had to practice under their husbands/partners name.

Mercifully this ended some while ago, and now architecture schools and onwards are more evenly gender balanced. Nobody suggests that women are somehow naturally 'less inclined', and the profession is richer for it.

It would be great if engineering could get to this point.

<comment><USER10> Not just architecture, also medicine and law. The whole question is what's different about math, CS, engineering and the physical sciences that makes it so much harder to reach gender balance there? If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far.

<comment><USER22> That doesn't follow suit with the history of computer science however. Women were a large amount of computer science grads back in the 70s and 80s where it was even more difficult and arguably less social then modern development.

Nowadays software dev is highly collaborative and social. It faced declining amounts of graduates that were women from the late-80s and onwards compared to engineering and the physical sciences which if I'm recalling correctly have steadily rose.

<comment><USER23> Women are the majority of CS grads in Saudi Arabia, and you'll find that they are many women studying CS in third-world countries that typically are less "gender egalitarian" than Western countries.

In wealthy, western countries giving men and women the choice of what to study without having to think too much about where they'll end up in society, that's where you see the most gender imbalance.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender- equality_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox)

<comment><USER22> Yes, but to make this argument you would have to demonstrate that the West somehow became much more gender egalitarian in the past 30 years in order to explain the drop in CS grads.

So what happened from the late 80s to now that resulted in women gaining more freedom and therefore shifting them out of CS? And more specifically: Why has this only affected computer science? The gender equality paradox supposedly holds for the entirety of STEM and yet we've seen woman graduates in STEM steadily rise across the board except for CS. Therefore that would make CS an outlier and not the norm.

That's assuming the gender equality paradox holds true which is likely not the case considering the issues with the assertion brought up in the Wikipedia article you linked (which I hope you read).

<comment><USER23> The fact remains that there are more women studying engineering (not just CS) in less egalitarian third world countries than in progressive western countries, despite the latter having campaigns, funding, etc.

The idea that male and female primates (including humans) have different ways to look at the world seems very sensible to me, and that would explain why "women care more about people" and "men care more about things".

<comment><USER22> That wasn't the argument I was making. Please don't change the topic. I don't dispute that there are more women studying engineering in said countries, what I asked you was a very specific question.

Why did Computer Science of all STEM degrees face a drop in female graduates versus the others?

And if you're making the argument that 'women care more about people' and 'men care more about things' then I'm going to disagree heavily considering it doesn't relate to modern day software development. Current development is highly collaborative, constantly dealing with other people whether it's customers or members of your team. In fact, back when CS was at its peak of women obtaining CS degrees, that was when CS was more focused on things and less on people as a result of software still being a niche and local thing. That argument doesn't work considering the history of CS as a whole.

<comment><USER23> I think the answer to your question is precisely that, with all the campaigns in the west telling women to follow their own path, do whatever they want, etc. they ended up predominantly choosing careers they actually like (nursing, teaching, anything that has to do with people)

There are always exceptions, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google has fired a few people, liberal and conservative, for being politically insufferable. Multiple people in the news about this on various places in political spectrum. It doesn't mean they were wrong.

<comment><USER25> There's been endless discussion about Damore. In particular podcasts you'd think that the firing of a random engineer at Google ranked alongside 9/11 as a defining event in modern history. If I circulated a memo to my co-workers that not only opposed a new policy from management, but did obvious harm to the expressed intent of that policy, I might be fired. It doesn't matter if the memo I circulated would have gotten a passing grade in a college class. The fact that people use that as an argument tells me that they've never worked a normal job before.

<comment><USER20> I can't tell if you're trying to say that a policy from management is beyond all reproach or if "these things just happen in the real world". Either way, the former shouldn't be true and the latter should be wrong. Of course, correctness doesn't stop anyone from being terminated, but that's not the point.

<comment><USER26> There are appropriate and inappropriate avenues for disagreeing with corporate policy; publicly on a large mailing list is going to get you in hot water no matter what the policy is.

<comment><USER27> I guess I take issue with this. Google encouraged discussion and disagreement on large mailing lists, unlike most companies. It doesn't seem right that Google would simultaneously sollicit such feedback and then punish somebody for giving them negative feedback.

<comment><USER25> I think what you're saying is valid, but the point I've been making is that the entire James Damore affair is interesting for pretty much the opposite reason to that which people who tend to bring it up claim.

"It doesn't seem right" is one thing, but that's not why it's still brought up 3 years after the memo was written. A lot has gone on in the world in the past 3 years that doesn't seem right that we've forgotten about or didn't hear about in the first place. Damore is used as a data point (in fact, as a central data point) in the thesis that "political correctness gone awry" or "social justice warriors run amok" are problems that rank highly in a list of society's most concerning. I think it's absurd. That this random dev's firing is doing so much work in bolstering this thesis just highlights the absurdity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you're looking for a little irony, here is Dr. Louanne Brizendine, Neuroscience PhD (Stanford, Yale, Berkeley) discussing how the female and male brains are different AT GOOGLE and with very warm, positive reception:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu_uGr1ZOn4&t=2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu_uGr1ZOn4&t=2s)

<comment><USER29> She has written books on both, and they're quite interesting.

I suppose she has to be cast to the "Intellectual Dark Web" for daring to suggest the obvious fact that our brains work differently.

The ultimate irony is that someone can deny such differences while simultaneously arguing for the importance of diversity. What a walking contradiction.

<comment><USER28> "We celebrate our diversity, but we cannot talk about what makes us different."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I remember at a previous job, a female engineer talking to other engineers when the Damore story broke. She said "I can't believe he said that women can't be good engineers" and indicated he deserved to be fired. As someone who actually read what he wrote, I just had to bite my tongue. That's not what he said _at all_ , but even making the distinction makes you one of "them" and politicizes the workplace. It's just disappointing that these little whirlwinds of misinformation bullshit get to circle around and everybody just has to nod their heads.

<comment><USER31> > As someone who actually read what he wrote, I just had to bite my tongue. > That's not what he said at all,

As someone that also read it, those arent the words he used, but that is very much what he was saying. A facade of misrepresented psuedoscience doesnt change the intent, motivation, or reality.

<comment><USER32> > but that is very much what he was saying

No it's not. Nowhere in the paper did he say that women can't become good engineers. You're literally defaming his work. Either support your accusation with evidence, or don't comment.

<comment><USER2> > those arent the words he used, but that is very much what he was saying

> Nowhere in the paper did he say that

You both are saying the same thing- he did not use those exact words.

The parent comment is saying that despite not saying "Women can't be engineers", the entire purpose of the paper, in the view of that reader, was to insinuate that women can't be engineers. It's not terribly hard to promote an idea without ever saying it explicitly. Perhaps you didn't read the deeper meaning out of the memo.

And demanding those who interpret things differently than you "don't comment" doesn't promote discussion, it ends it. When someone says something you disagree with, don't tell them to shut up, ask them why they see things differently. Debate. Discuss. Grow.

<comment><USER33> You're right that they both talked about exact words, but you're indexing too highly on it. Just because they used the same words in places doesn't mean they're saying the same thing. Reading again, I don't know why you start with that statement. It really muddies the rest of your comment.

Please take this idea with an open mind. When you arrive a singular purpose to the paper, it may say more about your views than it does about the author's. He didn't have a thesis that stated directly that he meant to "insinuate that women can't be engineers", so you're literally putting words in his mouth.

And the "don't comment" line explicitly said it was in response to statements that are unfounded, NOT statements that disagree.

Putting that all together, you seem to be having an argument with a ghost of your own making.

<comment><USER34> Parent is essentially playing the 'so what you're saying is...' card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Be honest.

Are you saying: "This statement is false, so I must argue against it."

Or are you saying: "I cannot accept the implications of this statement, so I must argue against it."

</comment><comment><USER35> I think conversations can be had with people like him, instead of taking the worst part of their views and ostracizing them for it. I think it is fine to acknowledge angst in the implementation of progressive ideals, that angst will often be mixed in with purely insensitive and uneducated thoughts.

There are productive outcomes possible by parsing and separating those issues.

I think it has been a big mistake of tech platforms - and really the people in the geographical area they are in - to simply be content with deplatforming people, assuming they are irreconcilable. It only emboldens, it doesn't stop the spread of disagreement, and from my perspective there really is a lot of common ground which is really just angst in _implementation_ of progressive ideals.

</comment><comment><USER36> I still do not understand why anyone is confused he got fired. He negatively affected both the company's brand and productivity. He simply wasn't important/useful enough to keep around in light of that.

Want more rights then work in a union. Otherwise, don't forget you're employed _at will_.

</comment><comment><USER37> No better place and time to post this.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) \- Paul Graham's 'What you can't say'

</comment><comment><USER38> Wonder how much money he got to shut up

</comment><comment><USER39> Its a settlement

</comment><comment><USER40> This discussion is almost textbook flamebait. Indeed the very topic itself was all about flame. It's impossible, I think, to be able to discuss it rationally without falling into our usual traps. Actually for many people to even consider that it is possible to discuss it rationally would be problematic and borderline offensive, for others, the lack of a rational discussion is itself proof of a big problem.

That's my observation of these threads - it's a curious game - the only winning move, Professor Falcon, is not to play. How about a nice game of Chess?

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://outline.com/HtuMWS](https://outline.com/HtuMWS)

</comment><comment><USER41> "As part of and a central stipulation of this agreement, the plaintiff agrees not to purchase a luxury convertible vehicle and drive it around Sunnyvale while having scantily clad models recite his original memo through megaphones."

</comment><comment><USER42> Was it Damore or Kevin Cernekee who quietly joined Apple to work on macos? I'm curious if they continue to be so outspoken there. My guess is their views would have to be kept to themselves. Apple really doesn't tolerate unwanted attention.

</comment><comment><USER43> The interest in this story has always intrigued me.

What is it about this story that keeps people engaged? Are other engineers concerned they could be fired like Damore for saying the wrong thing?

</comment><comment><USER44> Damore was not offered a chance to receive forgiveness by either the company or the outrage mob, therefore I don't respect what people generally have to say about whether what he did was right or wrong. It's astounding that people are still debating this in this very HN thread. A society of any size that makes virtue claims while simultaneously adding an undue price to being wrong or insensitive deserves to be mocked and ridiculed. You don't have to agree with anything Demore said, but the fact that Google openly encouraged political discussion, yet had an unwritten rule that if you say anything to upset a particular political demographic that you are terminated, is patently absurd. Companies shouldn't be encouraging employees to be political. We would never tolerate companies that encourage religious discussion but fire employees that say things against the Christian faith.

If you're going to come into this thread to refute Damore's memo and downvote people who don't tow your petty little line, your need to reexamine your principles, if you've got one.

<comment><USER45> 1\. I don't recall him ever "asking for forgiveness," or doing anything besides doubling down on his memo.

2\. The "outrage mob" isn't real. You know who got James Damore fired? Himself. It's especially telling that you, and people who defend him, attribute _zero_ fault whatsoever to the person who actually _wrote_ the memo.

<comment><USER46> Damore, trying to make an earnest intellectual contribution, got a lot of people really upset, and they campaigned to have him destroyed.

This is the most visceral and obvious example of an outrage mob possible.

<comment><USER47> I feel bad for anyone who disagrees with this. Their bias prevents them from seeing the world as it truly exists.

<comment><USER7> I feel bad for anyone who believes that their political opinions just happen to represent "the world as it truly exists".

<comment><USER46> Google is entirely full of vindictive people with blatantly political opinions - many who have acted with obvious malice towards others, so spare us the hypocrisy.

If this were truly a matter of 'opinion rocking the boat' \- then there would be a bunch of other firings, policy changes etc. - but that is not the case at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Would it be too much to ask that we collectively say "The Damore thing is obviously a [scissor statement]([https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort- by-controversial/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by- controversial/)), on which otherwise-reasonable people bafflingly manage to hold different views very strongly, and we should stop talking about it forthwith because no good can come of it"? Nothing new can be said on the subject, vanishingly few people can be persuaded one way or the other, and "news site primarily populated by shortform comments" is hardly the appropriate place to hold a protracted argument.

<comment><USER49> That story you links makes for some fascinating reading. Thanks.

<comment><USER50> Format reminds me of this cold war story: [https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall- tail](https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail)

"It made a horrible kind of sense, for Cold War values of sense: not a real rocket motor, but a vile way of getting your enemy's best and brightest to kill themselves by trying to reverse-engineer an impossible nightmare."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's annoying that Bloomberg refers to the memo as being "political" and expressing "political conservatism". The memo was attempting to explain the underrepresentation of women in tech via biological differences. That has literally nothing to do with politics, and framing it as such misrepresents and discredits the contents of the memo.

<comment><USER44> Is this what conservatism actually is, now? I'm just wondering because, although I agree that nothing Damore said was conservative in a traditional sense, maybe conservatism has just been made more broad in recent years.

For instance, I don't believe that I'm conservative at all, but my liberal friends and family tend to classify me as "conservative". I find it baffling because most of my beliefs are pretty permissive. Ask me about any individual stance, and I can assure you that the answer will most likely be a liberal one. But I'm considered "conservative" because my ideas are not all Liberal(with a capital-L). For instance, there's nothing particularly conservative about believing that biological sex has a determining(or at least predicting) factor on a person's behavior and preferences, yet because this is a stance that today's Liberalism looks down upon, it's considered de facto conservative merely on that basis. The same goes for things like libertarianism and having negative conclusions about socialism. They don't really have anything to do with being conservative in isolation, but if they aren't Liberal then they can only be conservative, in accordance with how the establishment media judge these things.

There needs to be a different word than conservatism for having positions that aren't part of the Liberal platform, but "conservative" works well from an optics perspective because it's been effectively vilified.

EDIT: LOL Am I being downvoted because I said people think I'm conservative? One of you people please tell me.

<comment><USER8> I think the modern conservative movement largely is explained by "a group of people that oppose liberalism." That's why you have such a weird coalition of religious groups, older intellectual conservatives, young Republicans, business people, trolls. They really don't have a ton in common, but frankly I get it. I live in the Midwest and while I consider myself an independent, most of my views are moderate or left-wing. But I went to grad school on the East Coast and I felt like an outsider and the most conservative person in class just for holding somewhat moderate views.

<comment><USER51> This is speculation but it seems like we should inevitably see political factions in the US being defined in this way (and it happens in the Democratic Party too, maybe not in as obvious or extreme a way) as a result of the well- known two-party endgame of our voting system. If your faction isn't one of the two, your choices are to join one or be irrelevant.

So you jump on the bandwagon with whoever you hate least, and pretty soon you find out that's almost all you have in common with the rest of the riders.

<comment><USER9> It may also be specific to conservative movements, given that by definition they oppose some change in society and so would naturally be diverse in their reason for opposing it (possibly more so than the supporters would be diverse in their reasons for supporting it).

<comment><USER51> That would explain why in our current system the conservative faction is more like this than the liberal faction. But what I was getting at is the reason that the conservative faction is essentially singular. In a less broken system, there could be multiple conservative factions and multiple liberal factions without the sub-factions feeling needing to choose whether to band together on every single issue or be irrelevant.

They could dynamically band together on a per-issue basis and have more reasoned discussions focusing on those issues instead of making sure to pronounce "shibboleth" correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> [https://archive.md/PCQUT](https://archive.md/PCQUT)

</comment><comment><USER53> > companies in Silicon Valley and beyond have instituted workplace rules > designed to protect employees with alternative viewpoints and prevent > bullying, Dhillon said.

Lipstick on a pig.

Racism is racism.

Sexism is sexism.

If you want to be a racist, sexist person, do it on your own time, not on the company dollar.

</comment><comment><USER54> Well, this takes the cake as the most toxic comments section I've ever seen on HN.

The degree of "I'm tired of the left being outraged at the right tearing our country apart but i also couldnt care about the right tearing our country apart, oh also let me normalize hating women" makes me very sad for our future.

</comment><comment><USER55> Can we somehow get "Damore" in the title?

</comment><comment><USER56> Seems unfair and propagandist to characterise Damore this way.

</comment><comment><USER57> >"Meanwhile, a judge opined it wouldn't be easy for two fellow plaintiffs to prevail on their "novel" theory that Google is biased against "political conservatives" -- a term the company argued was too vague to support a class- action suit."

Especially since anyone who rightfully calls themselves a "political conservative" has long since left the Republican party after it left them, and doesn't consider themselves an "alt right" Trump supporter.

</comment><comment><USER58> Nice way to make a buck, now off to fox News!

</comment><comment><USER59> Clearly a settlement, meaning he basically won. That's a big message to other organizations implementing similar codes of conduct.

</comment><comment><USER60> Plenty people here suggest Damore's something smart, can I see his GitHub?

</comment><comment><USER61> It's not that quiet if Bloomberg is writing about it...

<comment><USER62> Google quietly gave a press release to Bloomberg so they could quietly show it to thousands of people.

<comment><USER61> Exactly...

<comment><USER63> ...And we quietly read and comment on HN

<comment><USER62> I hope you aren't trying to make some sort of point about hypocrisy here. No one here is claiming they are posting on a public forum "quietly".

<comment><USER63> It's a joke, lighten up

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I don't understand why people are characterizing his firing as political. If you read his memo, it should be clear that he was fired for being sexist. His memo included a section which stated that women are biologically inferior to men. This immediately makes it very difficult to work with him for women and their allies. I know tech skews male, but software engineers have to interface with many other teams and many other functions, especially at Google. If he actually left out the biological differences claim, Google might not have fired him, but that section left Google no choice. I support discourse in general, but from a business/society perspective, you can't immediately make it difficult for a large plurality of your peers (and vast majority if you include allies) to work with you.

This is only political because right-wing political organizations have chosen to defend someone's sexist memo AFTER THE FACT, to drive the narrative of how Google is anti-right and is a left-wing puppet company. Calling this a political firing is only coopting their ridiculous narrative that he was fired for expressing "conservative values" or their sexist narrative that those conservative values include the fact that women are biologically inferior.

<comment><USER65> > His memo included a section which stated that women are biologically > inferior to men.

Just reread his memo and couldn't find this. Where did he say this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit on anyone claiming that a difference in interests does not equate to a difference in capabilities. Think about fields you are passionate about vs. fields you couldn't care less about. Do you honestly think you could excel equally in both fields? If you are going to make the argument then don't insult everyone else's intelligence by watering it down.

As freedom in a society increases, women increasingly choose different professions than men. The extent to which these reflect their innate interests rather than those imposed on them by society has a direct relationship to their relative capabilities to men in these fields in the aggregate.

</comment><comment><USER67> This topic is quickly going downhill in the comments, but I just wanted to clear some stuff up because there seems to be some "what he said isn't that bad!"

People wrongly think he said women are bad or stupid but that's not what he did say. He also didn't -just- say men and women are different.

He did say a 5-10% difference in certain traits is why there are huge discrepancies of women in leadership and science/engineering positions. And maybe that's ok and we should just let it be.

Sorry, but "girls don't like to make hard choices or do 'nerdy' things" isn't a real thing. Hundreds of years of "stay in the kitchen" is what proactive programs to bring women into these positions are trying to reverse. It's not biological.

<comment><USER68> 80% of students of veterinary medicine are women. 75% of students in psychology are women. It is simple math: Any woman who studies to become a teacher, counselor or social worker can not study to become an engineer.

Being a programmer is not competing with "stay in the kitchen". It is competing with this:

[https://www.eastvalleyanimalclinic.com/sites/site-6136/image...](https://www.eastvalleyanimalclinic.com/sites/site-6136/images/Staff%20photo%202017-2.jpg)</comment></comment>


Whatever you set the URL to, that HTTP code will be returned - <AUTHOR> http://codes.io/ <comment><USER2> Similar to [http://httpbin.org/](http://httpbin.org/) & [http://httpbin.org/status/](http://httpbin.org/status/)

<comment><USER3> This site was very helpful when I refractored a program from using libcurl to cpprest. I used it to make sure the sent http request headers where exactly the same.

<comment><USER4> You could have just looked at the traffic directly with wireshark rather than trust an external site.

<comment><USER5> I think this might not be possible for SSL/TLS traffic, without some kind of MITM.

<comment><USER6> It is possible with SSL/TLS traffice: you need to supply private key to WireShark, so it will be able to decode conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neat idea.

Please support "451 Unavailable for legal reasons".

[http://www.451unavailable.org/](http://www.451unavailable.org/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451)

<comment><USER8> My favorite is 418 - I'm a teapot: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Text_Coffee_Pot_Control_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Text_Coffee_Pot_Control_Protocol)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On another note, if you want a swell compilation and explanation of every HTTP status code:

[https://httpstatuses.com/](https://httpstatuses.com/)

or by individual code..

[https://httpstatuses.com/200](https://httpstatuses.com/200) [https://httpstatuses.com/201](https://httpstatuses.com/201) [https://httpstatuses.com/404](https://httpstatuses.com/404) [https://httpstatuses.com/418](https://httpstatuses.com/418)

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, seems like the upcoming "Hello World" for API services :-)

I also made a "return the HTTP code you request"-service like this, but with another design choice than in this one and some others like [http://httpbin.org/](http://httpbin.org/), [https://httpstatuses.com/](https://httpstatuses.com/), [http://httpstat.us/](http://httpstat.us/).

Instead of specifying the requested HTTP code in the URL path, I put the requested HTTP code in the URL query, basically ignoring the URL path. In that way, the URL path -- the resource identification in a REST-styled API -- can stay whatever you want as you're specifying the requested status code as query parameter. This made testing a program that uses resources in a REST API easier, as I don't need to rewrite the URL path, but just require to add a query parameter in my test code.

Example: instead of [http://example.com/404](http://example.com/404) I request [http://example.com/resource/id?response=404](http://example.com/resource/id?response=404) to get a 404 response. [http://example.com/resource/another- id?response=200](http://example.com/resource/another-id?response=200) gets a 200 code.

<comment><USER10> Oh, and also other request types are specified in the URL query, such as a delayed response: [http://example.com/resource/id?delay=0.5](http://example.com/resource/id?delay=0.5), which returns a 200 after 0.5 seconds.

In this way, combining requested responses is also possible: [http://example.com/resource/id?status=500&delay=2](http://example.com/resource/id?status=500&delay=2) to return a 500 after 2 seconds.

I couldn't figure out if this behavior is also possible with services specifying the desired responses in the URL path.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately it just returns the code, not a compliant response (e.g., 405 should return an Allow: header).

</comment><comment><USER12> This is my go-to resource for looking up status codes: [https://http.cat/](https://http.cat/)

Examples: [https://http.cat/418](https://http.cat/418) \- [https://http.cat/451](https://http.cat/451)

</comment><comment><USER13> Similar: [http://httpstat.us](http://httpstat.us)

</comment><comment><USER14> Input validation needed. [http://codes.io/12345](http://codes.io/12345) returns " Application Error

An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.

If you are the application owner, check your logs for details."

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's one you can run yourself, if you want: [https://github.com/bmhatfield/httpecho](https://github.com/bmhatfield/httpecho)

<comment><USER16> [http://posthere.io/](http://posthere.io/) is also OSS and you can run it yourself if you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10046972/msie-returns- sta...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10046972/msie-returns-status-code- of-1223-for-ajax-request)

[http://codes.io/1223](http://codes.io/1223) -> 503

<comment><USER18> Anything unexpected returns 503. Try [http://codes.io/404/](http://codes.io/404/) (notice the ending /)

Besides, 1223 isn't specified by the HTTP RFCs, nor is it returned anywhere except from a library call in a buggy library. I'd say it's not appropriate for an HTTP testing service to support 1223.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For local testing I often run pathod ([http://pathod.net/](http://pathod.net/)), which can not only yield arbitrary response codes based on the request URL, but randomly generated headers and body and even timeouts.

</comment><comment><USER20> Weird, it doesn't implement "HTTP 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons" or "HTTP 420 DAB Session". It also doesn't return an Allow: header for 405. It also doesn't return 100-103.

<comment><USER16> [https://posthere.io/](https://posthere.io/) implements 451, 420 and 100-103. It also doesn't return an Allow: header for 405.

I opened an issue for that: [https://github.com/SnootyMonkey/posthere.io/issues/4](https://github.com/SnootyMonkey/posthere.io/issues/4)

<comment><USER20> Awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not sure if I'm missing the purpose of this site, but why not just print off this list and refer to it when writing code: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes)

<comment><USER10> While that list is handy for sure, the OP's site also enables you to actually get the HTTP status code of your desires, since you can specify it in the request URL path: [http://codes.io/304](http://codes.io/304). This will return a `304 Not Modified` response, which can be helpful in writing testcode for your API service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. I noticed it is built on Heroku platform. What specific stack did you use to implement this?

<comment><USER23> you could use pretty much anything.

rails would be

        def status
          render(text: params[:status], status: params[:status])
        end

<comment><USER5> interestingly, i believe your sample code would, in all but the latest version of Rails, leave someone open to some of the Rails CVEs that just got announced yesterday :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 100 doesn't work (it returns 503)

<comment><USER18> Seems none of the 1xx series are expected by the service. Anything unexpected returns 503. Try adding a / at the end of one that does work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Similar [http://get.reststat.us/407](http://get.reststat.us/407)

</comment><comment><USER26> Can you print the text in the body of the result? Not just the code.

</comment><comment><USER27> 418 Works...

<comment><USER28> So? It's valid, isn't it? "I'm a teapot"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Huh?

$ curl -i codes.io/600

HTTP/1.1 -424 ???

...

</comment><comment><USER30> We have reached peak HN.</comment>


For Sale: Deep, Spacious Roswell Property, Once Occupied by a Missile - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/us/roswell-new-mexico-missile-silo-for-sale.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER2> The potentially new owners (the listing[1] is marked "sale pending") would definitely have a lot of work to do but fortunately it does not look like the silo is below the water table. I looked at silos for a while and a lot of them were simply full of water as they required constant pumping if you wanted to keep them dry. Not all silos kept the missile vertical (like this one apparently did), those have large doors which can open up (assuming enough power/hydraulic fluid). Given the 51' diameter by 300' deep measure of the silo, if you put an elevator right down the middle you could have 25 floors of 'pie shaped' rooms (assuming a 1/4 section per room that is approximately 1900 sq feet per floor (47,500 sq ft total) That is a pretty big workshop space :-)

[1] [http://www.century21.com/property/8422-clovis-hwy-roswell- nm...](http://www.century21.com/property/8422-clovis-hwy-roswell- nm-88201-C2122348538)

</comment><comment><USER3> In the last decade I spent a fair bit of time working on the idea of buying and refurbing Missile site. I researched Atlas, Titan and Nike sites and even joined a list of ex-air force missileers. One thing about those guys who spent years in them- they talked a lot about the hazardous chemicals, and when one of these sites would come onto the market often people who had worked there would talk about accidents that had happened and various dangers.

To be explicit: What the Air Force considered "Safe" for a situation in which the guys in the station are a long way away in a control room, and what you might consider safe for your house or work environment are very different. The fuel refilling area, where there was a massive spill that wasn't really cleaned up, might be your living room, if you did a conversion. Not saying it's not safe, just be aware and if you go into this, find some guys who served there and get their info.

The TLDR of my years looking into this: 0\. Nikes were first and are little more than garages with opening roofs. Not too exciting. Atlas was the next generation and these have buried silos and control rooms, there were several models with the Atlas -F probably the most interesting. Titan is the Big Kahuna of them. They have miles of tunnels and usually multiple silos (I think they cam in 3, 6 and 9 configurations) and massive power rooms and control rooms and all kinds of stuff.

1\. The people selling them have dollar signs in their eyes, much of the time. One Titan site I ran down the history of (I doxxed the owners effectively) was bought for $30k in the early 1980s, has never been listed for less than $1M, has never sold, and most recently was listed for $3M. This despite a massive hole in the power station wall, which alone will cost $300k to fix, probably. Most of these are absurdly priced. Realistically, it doesn't matter if the government spent $300M building it, an unrenovated site should cost maybe $100k more than the land itself. The cost of renovation will be more than the cost of getting an equivalent housing built from scratch by a "survivalist" oriented builder, in most cases.

2\. If it's not renovated it's going to cost you a lot to renovate. IF that Titan site had been renovated (like some of the homes in Kansas) then maybe it would be worth $3M But renovations to make something like this livable, extremely expensive, and problematic because who wants the liability of making a home out of a toxic waste site (the silos in Denver area are sold with an attachment declaring them such, and I think forbidding living in them.)

2a. If you don't have $300k (atlas maybe) - $1M (titan, minimum) for renovations you may not be ready for this. (There is a couple near Kansas City that renovated an Atlas, probably for a lot less, and they used to give tours.)

3\. The best place to go is probably here, if you're serious: [http://www.missilebases.com](http://www.missilebases.com)

4\. The same sites come up for sale, over and over again, over many years (see #1) They aren't building any more but they aren't running out of them. Supply remains pretty constant.

An anecdote: I discovered the owners of the Titan site I wanted were real estate pros in California, and was hoping they were really leveraged. This was during the bubble (which having studied economics I knew would collapse) I was hoping they'd be desperate to sell their site after the bubble collapsed and after we were more than 5 years away from 2001 (and the survivalist surge that happened right after). Alas I was wrong, their prices went up. Since the crash their prices have come down a bit, but they're still 10x where it makes sense.

<comment><USER4> Great info! What were you planning to do?

<comment><USER5> I'm thinking ball pit.

<comment><USER3> Many times the silos get flooded. The equipment is pulled out when they are abandoned leaving a lot of half broken stuff (eg: they don't care about stairs but might care about the thing holding them up).

I know of one that was used as a cave diving environment, but seems really dangerous to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a number of silo conversions that have been done in the past, some with fantastic results: [http://www.silohome.com/](http://www.silohome.com/) [http://dornob.com/ultimate-underground-home-converted- nuclea...](http://dornob.com/ultimate-underground-home-converted-nuclear- missile-silo/) [http://www.gizmag.com/luxury-survival- condos/34861/](http://www.gizmag.com/luxury-survival-condos/34861/)

Can't help but think that maintenance of such a thing could be very challenging after a while.

<comment><USER7> A little reminiscent of the Fallout post-apocalyptic game series.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There were no coordinates given in the listing but I think this may be the place: [http://goo.gl/maps/mH7d9](http://goo.gl/maps/mH7d9)

<comment><USER9> It may sound dumb, but I'm absolutely fascinated looking at the desert in Google Maps. It's just so... empty. Mysterious little dirt roads, unexplained (but very square) patches of cleared area, and every once in a while, boom, a missile silo.

<comment><USER10> Not dumb! Deserts are beautiful and amazing. If you never have, take a peek at Namibia[1] (my favorite visited deserts to date).

[1] [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Namibia/@-23.1991868,17.22...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Namibia/@-23.1991868,17.2220959,1442999m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x1bf53c7e6ed37521:0xd3b9e5a5a8ecb261)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If it has a good Internet connection, and is well-ventilated, I bet half the people reading this would be OK with living there.

I'd install a camera up top and hook it up to a large 4k display for a "window".

<comment><USER11> Internet connection is wireless only (unless you get a phone line to property). No broadband and cell coverage is hit and miss.

5Mbps is about as fast as you can reasonably get and runs about $80/month. It lags very slightly, and the receiver better stay pointing right at their tower. The winds sometimes shift the receiver a little, and it has to be adjusted or speed really drops.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I would fix all that. I'd run a fiber out there myself if that's what it took lol. And lag, lag is right out unacceptable.

Of course, this is still merely a fantasy in my head at this time ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would love to live in a missile silo. Great insulation. No noise from your neighbors. Tornado warning? Not a problem. I can't think of any downsides!

<comment><USER13> No noise from neighbors? No neighbors at all!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having been there, it is hard to imagine wanting to live in/near Roswell.

<comment><USER11> I live in Roswell, and am trying to think of a reason to disagree with you....

If you really value remoteness and open space it's good. I live on a hill on some acreage outside of town and can see nearly 40 miles off my back patio without a houses or building in view. I can (and sometimes do) shoot guns from my back porch.

But, If you want to be near decent restaurants, stores with clothes you might actually wear, and people you can hold a conversation with.... it's probably not the best place.

Oh, don't let me forget the wind and dust-storms. It's blazing hot in the summer, but the winters are fairly mild. The economy is not good (except during oil booms)... wages are very severely depressed, there is not a lot of educated people nor people with ambition as they have left for the most part. The general culture reflects this degeneration. Lazy and slow and non-curious is a way of life.

So why am I here? (I'm not from here). Well... you should see the night sky for one. Far away from big cities in the desert.... you feel like you are right there in the universe and the milky way is a river of light. But truly, the desert to the south (Carlsbad to South Texas) or west of here (Arizona) is a lot more amazing as far as plants and scenery. This is is really the very far Southwestern edge of the Great Plains. (Actually... its a girlfriend thing, that's the real reason. But the sky is nice.).

This site is about 20 minutes outside town. Not too far away are the mountains.. an hour or so from a ski resort (Ruidoso... a pretty little town but not much there). It's on the very edge of the foothills as the plains start turning into the Rockies. The drive up the canyon to Ruidoso is quite pretty. The site is right off the highway (power close or right to site) and has BLM ground surrounding it. There are no trees nor large cactus... it's arid grassland with cholla and prickly pear cactus and low scrubby mesquite. There are lots of coyotes, hawks, antelope, foxes, porcupine and skunks. And rattlesnakes. I found 7 of them on the property over last summer. The soil is caliche... old ocean bed reef, and hard as a rock. You would have trouble growing anything between the critters and poor soil. A decent well would probably be around 300 feet deep and the water very very hard. I'm not sure it would be an acceptable place to live for anyone but the most hermit minded.....

<comment><USER15> I grew up in Farmington and lived in Las Cruces and Albuquerque. Spent some time in Ruidoso as well, as my uncle is a pipefitter and helped redo the Inn.

It's still hard to explain to people what living in a place like Roswell or Farmington is like. Both places swing up and down according to oil prices. both are big enough to have just barely what you might want or need, but not much more. More importantly, they are their own big cities. And that's the thing that people don't get: When the nearest (modest) cultural mass is at least three hours away, you don't live anywhere near an interstate, and every other town is an order of magnitude smaller, everybody tends to stay put and things get insular (not necessarily in a bad way though) and weird.

I've gotten in arguments about this before from people who claimed they grew up in smaller towns, but the key difference is those small towns aren't their own isolated islands. I liked growing up there as a kid, but I'd take a small town of 2000 people an hour away from a major city over the Ruidosos and Farmingtons in a heartbeat.

On the other hand, the desert was literally our playground as a kid, and that's an amazing thing to grow up with.

BTW: Lots of great astronomy still happens around Cloudcroft if you ever get up there.

<comment><USER11> Great summation. Especially the island part. That is exactly what it's like. Living on an island. The surrounding desert is the ocean. Three hours to get anywhere (and it's not much of anywhere when you get there). 8 hours to a real cultural center like Denver, Dallas or Phoenix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From userfriendly.org : [http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010611](http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010611) and the following strips

</comment><comment><USER17> At that price and depending on clean-up costs, you could potentially make money setting it up as a really novel AirBnb property.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _The military designed the missiles and the bunkers that housed them with the utmost urgency, working at a moment when the concern over national security was so severe that it bordered on panic._

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like the perfect place to take my X-Com collaborative writing project to the next level!</comment>


Kinect can now be used to diagnose depression with 90% accuracy? - <AUTHOR> http://thescorpionthefrog.com/2013/04/02/now-my-kinect-can-tell-me-if-im-depressed-with-90-accuracy/

<comment><USER2> As usual, vague terms like "90% accuracy" are thrown around without specifying what exactly they mean. Is that a 10% false positive rate? A 10% false negative rate? 90% accuracy over a representative sample of the general population?

Because the last one is what would _seem_ to be implied, but I have a much simpler program, written in pure JavaScript, that is also 90% accurate at diagnosing Americans with depression: <https://gist.github.com/osuushi/5297823>

Since, according to the CDC[1], about 10% of Americans are depressed, my script will be accurate 90% of the time.

[1] <http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/>

<comment><USER3> _> I have a much simpler program, written in pure JavaScript, that is also 90% accurate at Diagnosing Americans with depression_

...well played.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 90% isn't all that great of a result considering only about 6.7% of the US population suffers from depression each year[1] and the study was done in California. Just returning false would give you better accuracy.

Still Eliza on steroids is pretty cool. Can't wait till they integrate it into emacs.

[1] <http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1MDD_ADULT.shtml>

<comment><USER5> They give their hypothesis in the paper, and each is shown with a p value < 0.05, so is statistically significant (and better than just returning false :)

[http://schererstefan.net/assets/files/scherer_etal_FG2013.pd...](http://schererstefan.net/assets/files/scherer_etal_FG2013.pdf)

<comment><USER4> p values are a measure of the accuracy of the numbers. They are measuring how close the sample mean is to the population mean. In the case of the paper, the p values represent how close the sample mean of the head gaze, eye gaze, smile intensity and smile duration measurements are to the population means of the same values.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is interesting to me because... is there even a scientific definition of depression yet? Such that, if you have a defined list of symptoms, you are definitely depressed, and if you don't, you are definitely not depressed?

If not, we're at best talking about a magnitudinal thing or a probability thing. Like a Bayesian thing where each symptom's presence updates the probability of the person being depressed, which is turn based off of a database of previous cases of diagnosed depression and what symptoms they had.

But even that may be circular, ultimately. It could just as well be that depression is a vague category of similar symptoms that each come from a wide variety of scientific causes.

This is not to be mistaken for saying it doesn't exist or that it's all in someone's head - it's more just to say that if someone has depression, they have _something_ that may deserve treatment and sensitivity, but that it's something that we still do not know _exactly_ how to describe or diagnose, and so therefore we will just call it "depression" in the meantime. But what if we've sort of collectively forgotten the "in the meantime" part?

<comment><USER7> > This is interesting to me because... is there even a scientific definition > of depression yet? Such that, if you have a defined list of symptoms, you > are definitely depressed, and if you don't, you are definitely not > depressed?

It depends a bit on what you mean. In the U.S. at least, diagnosis of depression is generally based on the American Psychiatric Association's _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_ (DSM).[1] That lists a number of disorders that would be categorized under "depression", including "Major Depressive Disorder", "Dysthymia", and the catchily named "Depressive Disorder Not Otherwise Specified".

In the DSM, these disorders are all treated as _syndromes_ , meaning they are defined entirely by symptoms. They may have organic causes (troubles with neurotransmitters, etc.), but the _definition_ of each disorder does not address that issue. This is in contrast to something like influenza, which refers to a particular organic cause (infection by a certain kind of virus).

As for the actual definitions, they vary in how specific they are. Major Depressive Disorder is quite specific, requiring certain kinds of episodes to occur with specified frequencies and lengths. On the other end of the scale is DD-NOS, which is essentially defined as a depression-ish thing that doesn't fit into any of the other categories. (Okay, it's a little more precise than that, but, honestly, not much.)

> This is not to be mistaken for saying it doesn't exist or that it's all in > someone's head - it's more just to say that if someone has depression, they > have something that may deserve treatment and sensitivity, but that it's > something that we still do not know exactly how to describe or diagnose, and > so therefore we will just call it "depression" in the meantime.

I'd say that's pretty much on target. However, biology & biochemistry are proceeding forward at a breakneck pace these days. We do have some understanding of the causes for some kinds of depression, and this understanding seems to be improving significantly each year.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Man...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders)

<comment><USER8> What about correlations with patterns in MRI scans?

<comment><USER9> MRI's are expensive (in the US). Specialist mental health care is not covered under most standard health insurance plans. How about you just fill out the questionnaire[1], and we'll match you with a nice (newly patented) pill?

[1] <http://www.depressedtest.com>

See also: Questionable sponsorship of online depression tests.

[http://www.policymed.com/2010/02/letters-from-grassley- quest...](http://www.policymed.com/2010/02/letters-from-grassley-questions- webmd-advertising-model.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "SimSensei can work out whether you're exhibiting signs that indicate depression"

Im not sure I totally buy it - Im sure it can pick up the signs with 90% accuracy but how often do the signs actually correspond to a clinically depressed person. Just because your in a down mood at one moment does not mean you are depressed - depression is just a lot more complex than that. Im not sure that this would be of much use in accurate diagnosis although it seems like pretty interesting tech.

<comment><USER11> Depends on the kind of questions they're asking, really.

As someone with relatively mild depression, you'd never know it in normal conversation. But if you ask directly about symptoms and I give honest answers, both the answers themselves and my body language will probably give you a pretty good indication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> First of all, this is blog spam, and the OP has apparently never tried viewing their own site on a tablet.

Second, where's the methodology.

Third, it's not the Kinect doing the diagnosing, it's the computer vision algorithm

<comment><USER13> It looks like the research paper this is based on is here:

[http://schererstefan.net/assets/files/scherer_etal_FG2013.pd...](http://schererstefan.net/assets/files/scherer_etal_FG2013.pdf)

I've only skimmed it, but the vision work looks sound, and it looks like it makes pretty essential use of the depth map from the Kinect. But I don't think there's any speech recognition going on, so that part is just acting (from both the humans and the virtual platform). I'll bet an untrained user could get the system to break pretty quickly...

Neat proof of concept, though.

<comment><USER14> Another thing is that this needs a properly trained interviewer, and it's not based on the Kinect's measurements alone but also on the questions asked (and the reaction is then measured). The behaviour of the interviewer is a great confounding factor in this.

Reminds me of a certain someone asking another certain someone why he flipped a tortoise in the desert...

<comment><USER13> I think the problem isn't with the published paper - it looks like they used a trained human interviewer and recorded both humans to evaluate their descriptors. The real problem is with the PR video, which looks really impressive, but seriously oversells the capabilities of the system. Not that the problem is unique to this situation - I think a lot of the videos in AI oversell the research. It's a pity, because the research is usually very good, but by itself isn't "exciting enough for general consumption," so they add bells and whistles that have nothing to do with the science.

<comment><USER14> You're right, posting the paper and not that blog-post would have led to a much more interesting discussion.

One of the strangest things in that SimSensei is the automated interviewer - when I talk to a recorded voice instead of a real person, I behave enormously different! Why should I fidget around in answering when no-one really listens anyway? Why should I give proper answers? Why should I exhibit signs of shame when I talk to no-one about myself?

This doesn't work like described in the paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Doctors tried something similar with paper forms in the 60s. It was pretty disastrous, given depression is such a complex, "3d" kind of issue. Adam Curtis explored this theme in perhaps his best series of documentaries, "The Trap" - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbRApO3k_Jo>

<comment><USER16> Well, the Kinect should give 3D data, so that should help, right? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As if depression were a Boolean label.

</comment><comment><USER18> If it's as accurate as the team says it is, this is pretty astounding IMO. They'd have to be capturing some sort of baseline in the beginning of the conversation, and recording relative shifts of variables (ie; smile, eye shift/location) to come up with how "depressed" the person is. Just writing some software that says "oh this person is looking down" probably wouldn't cut it-- because shy people look down too. I noticed in the demo it seemed as if it started monitoring these things after certain questions were asked, which would be the correct way to measure a shift from baseline. Elicit a predictable period of what could be change and record.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm tempted to send this to my shrink to see if he'll take the hint and cut his prices. I'm not optimistic, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> This article actually reminded me a lot of iCouch.me, which is like virtual therapy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Actually, I'm looking to do something like this in related applications. Just need to find time to go through the kinect capabilities....my own unit has been gathering dust on my shelf for a while. Anyone in southern california (LA area or within driving distance) want to talk about this?

</comment><comment><USER21> Do psychiatrists' diagnoses of depression even agree with that level of accuracy amongst themselves?

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe its just most Xbox360 users are depressed about spending $400 just so they can play Halo.

</comment><comment><USER23> How does it determine depression vs boredom?

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow - So has those 20 question things that have been in magazines and tabloids for 40 years.....</comment>


Git Hooks - pre-commit - <AUTHOR> http://leftnode.com/git-hooks-pre-commit/ <comment><USER2> Just posted this to the blog, thought I would repost here too:

I recently wrote a pre-commit hook that runs pylint on my Python files.

<http://fitzgeraldnick.com/weblog/9/>

"git diff –staged –name-only HEAD" will get you the files that are about to be committed and then you can check if they end with ".php" (or ".py" in my case) and go from there. I also check to see if "#!" and "python" are in the first line of a file because my pre-commit hook is written in python but doesn't have an extension, just a crunch bang.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use pre-commit to check if I've left any software breakpoints in my code. Very handy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is this interesting? pre-commit triggers were in BitKeeper, what, 10 years ago?

Did I miss something exciting here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most version control systems have hooks, I recently ported one of my subversion hooks to git and decided to blog about it.

I figured it'd probably help someone out there, which is why I submitted it to HN.</comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs: Don't Blame Us - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_15/b4173030234603.htm

<comment><USER2> The real problem is not that Goldman Sachs knows how to exploit bubbles or that they sell bad products or turn to the government when their gambles don't pay off.

The real problem is that our government seems to be at the beck and call of Goldman Sachs and entities like it.

Congress has even surrendered its responsibility for our money to the Federal Reserve, a scheme hatched by bankers that created the bubble leading up to first great depression.

<comment><USER3> "First great depression"?

The "first" great depression had the Dust Bowl, mass migration, people starving to death right in public, shantytowns popping up everywhere, and 25% unemployment. The "first" great depression had a 30% decline in GDP.

When was the second great depression?

<comment><USER4> I call this the Petty Depression. It's not nearly as bad as the depression of the 1930s, but it's worse than a recession. Recession is the predictable, brief, and necessary period of creative destruction and contraction in a functioning economy. It causes some people to get laid off, but they usually get better jobs within 1-3 years, and the economy as a whole improves. This is something else, and will have a long-term scarring effect on the nation.

The fact that "petty" means both small (which this one is, as far as depressions go) and mean-spirited (price-gouging on housing with young families at the barrel-end) means it fits surprisingly well.

<comment><USER2> how about we see how this goes before we declare it healed?

The government borrowing massively to keep the government sector expanding and is paying people to consume in an effort to convince everybody that things are recovering.

This is not sustainable and only worsens our situation. One day, we must face up to our debts. We'll be very lucky if interest rates aren't jacked up on us.

And, as in Japan, it seems they want to keep the zombie banks alive and avoid acknowledging the extent of the problems.

<comment><USER4> I'm not ready to "declare it healed", but the probability that our depression becomes anywhere near as severe as the 1930s Great Depression is very low. It has created a lot of suffering, and will likely cause a lot more, and we may not get out of it until the 2020s, but I don't see it as likely that people will starve in this country, nor do I see widespread bank failures as likely.

<comment><USER5> We will never see another depression driving down living standards to the level of the 1930s due to technology.

But a relatively similar percentage reduction? Quite likely. I would say that this depression looks quite similar to the beginning of the great depression when you consider unemployment percentages and debt as a percent of GDP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Finally some macro on HN :)

I can buy the argument that Goldman didn't see the subprime coming since they were initially exposed (or so the story goes [http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/04/wall- str...](http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/04/wall-street- excerpt-201004?printable=true&currentPage=1.)) Because of this, they were the first big bank to see the coming _pop_ , and acted.

However, while their CFO may be the most "frustrated" he's ever been during his 30 years as a Goldmanite, I'm the most frustrated I've ever been in my 23 years as an American. To see this bank make millions every day because a luiqidity-at-all-costs monetary policy issues taxpayer debt to TBTFs as near- zero % interest loans which they use to jack the DOW to all time highs is ridiculous. Yes, the US government is totally unable to tackle the country's financial problems which creates opportunities for I-banks like GS, but I can hardly believe the right path requires a bonanza for these guys. Non-CNBC headlines consistently point to a blatant conflict of interest between fiscal policy and wall street profits (today: [http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-tim-geithner- sni...](http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-tim-geithner-sniveling- scamster.)) They want to play the dangerous game of squeezing the heart of our nation during a time of impending crisis.. look to Blackwater for PR advice.

Obligatory: <http://creattica.com/photoshop/ut104/18473>

<comment><USER7> They saw it coming. They shorted the same subprime products they were selling. GS bankers are on tape saying they will murder the client on a specific deal related to these shorts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This situation makes me so mad my teeth hurt, but I don't think Goldman is at fault. They were no better or worse than other i-banks, interspersing themselves into the money flow, probably sucking out more value than they were creating -- I think so. The fault is with the government for bailing them out. They should be bankrupt, shareholders wiped out, company carved up and sold off, making room for better companies. Instead the government decided to give them billions (which they paid out as bonuses to themselves). It was ludicrous, the government gave them 100 cents on the dollar for AIG. Why 100, why not 120, why not 200, it would have made just as much sense.

<comment><USER9> "Goldman vigorously disputes that it could not have survived if the government hadn't paid it in full"

Maybe you missed the part in the article where they said they could have survived without the money.

Also the TARP money was pretty much forced on them <http://goo.gl/N7SP> (businessinsider.com)

<comment><USER2> they would have survived, but they certainly would have had a big loss without that 12 or 14 billion payoff from AIG.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What bullshit.

1\. Goldman blew up AIG by making AIG post collateral based on market prices (for bond insurance AIG had written). Because this is only fair.

2\. Goldman got the feds to pay off the insurance at 100% value, not market value. Without an insurable event happening, and without executing the insurance by delivering the bonds.

3\. Goldman used the pay off to buy the bonds. At unspecified prices, presumably market prices if we read between the lines.

4\. "Qualified investors" knew what they were getting into massive risks buying certain instruments. They were well informed and knew how to investigate and rate risk properly. But when Goldman bought bond insurance from AIG, they were shocked, shocked to find AIG could not pay.

<comment><USER11> 1\. Two multinational corporations staffed by highly sophisticated investors came up with a contract. One corporation then enforced the terms of the contract.

How evil.

4\. The "qualified investors" knew that the contract might obligate them to pay out large sums of money. If you bet money on a horse race, you better plan for losing.

On the other hand, Goldman (and everyone else) did not expect gigantic AAA counterparties to go bankrupt. If you bet money on a horse race, you might not plan for winning but then having the track going bankrupt.

<comment><USER5> 1\. When anyone loans money or buys an insurance policy, they are subject to counterparty risk: <http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/counterpartyrisk.asp>

What is evil is that if it was you instead of Goldman Sachs, AIG would have paid you pennies on the dollar instead of the full value on paper.

4\. See #1. Counterparty risk is part of every deal.

Example:

If you took a bet from Joe Sixpack that would probably pay $1000, but possibly $10 million (more than his life time earnings), the US government would not, and should not, be using taxpayer money to pay you $10 million in the worst case scenario. Unless you happen to be Goldman Sachs.

<comment><USER11> The post I'm responding to is not criticizing the bailout, it is criticizing Goldman for enforcing it's contracts with AIG.

For the record, I'm not defending the bailout, I've always opposed the bailout, and one of my highest rated comment on HN ever is a snarky post criticizing the bailout.

<comment><USER5> _it is criticizing Goldman for enforcing it's contracts with AIG_

It is nowhere near the financial norm to expect companies to have the government pick up the tab for failed counterparties.

Why can't people criticize Goldman for doing that? Can I not criticize multi- billion dollar companies for putting former members into high ranking officers to influence the politics? Can I not criticize connected donors that break laws and then are able to get a pardon from the President?

Just because they _can_ , doesn't mean they _should_.

<comment><USER9> So what your saying is that the CEO who used to run the most successful bank on Wall St and probably knows more about financial markets than the majority of people shouldn't be used to run the FED?

Who would you want to run the FED? An elected politician? :)

<comment><USER5> Actually yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

And just so you know, the chairman of the Fed is Ben Bernanke, who has never been part of Goldman Sachs. The fact that Goldman is so successful is because Goldman members like Henry Paulson are _unelected_ politicians, the worst type.

<comment><USER9> Maybe you have more faith in your elected politicians than I do! :) I however don't trust anyone who needs to lobby everyone all the time to raise enough money to get elected.

Right.. my bad. Ben's great and seems to be great for the job.

<comment><USER5> It's much worse when you let one person (even the president) do the picking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Weird, no one seems to blame our own government.

<comment><USER2> I did if you check my first comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's so hilarious seeing bankers and investers pointing finger elsewhere - especially Goldman Sachs, of all the greedy, evil people...

<comment><USER14> Greedy, sure ok. But 'evil'... seriously?

<comment><USER4> Goldman Sachs is pretty fucking scummy, but not substantially worse than the rest of Wall Street; anyway, the pace-setting for scumbaggery was set in the past by many firms that don't even exist anymore. The only thing I would call _evil_ about GS is the way it is managed to convert its economic power into political power, thus preventing proper regulation of the banking industry, and that's the government's fault (and ours) as much as it is theirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't know whether the actions of GS, AIG, Citi, BoA, Lehman, Merrill, Countrywide, New Century, the Fed or anybody else involved in the slicing and dicing of mortgages constitutes treason but they sure betrayed my trust and confidence in financial institutions, breached my faith in financial markets, and made me realize that investing with these organizations is treacherous.

I'm sure the good people of Iceland would agree.

<comment><USER9> Huh? you lost me. Care to explain how you got from mortgage slicing to treason?

<comment><USER2> he said he DIDN'T know if it constitutes treason.

<comment><USER9> Although technically he said he 'DIDN'T know', then why did he think it was worth while saying it? He wanted to use the word 'treason' in his argument for affect, without taking responsibility for it's use. Too bad. I'm calling on it.

It's like me saying "I don't know if obesity is related to use of baseball caps but i've lost my trust in the government". Yeah.. it's ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Jury, you've heard every word, But before you decide. Would you look into those mother me eyes, I love you, for you my love, For you my love.

Don't blame, The sweet and tender hooligan, hooligan, 'Cause he said that he'd never, never, never, never do it again.

He was a sweet and tender hooligan, hooligan, Because he'd never, never, never, never do it again.

-The Smiths, Sweet and Tender Hooligan

<comment><USER17> I approve, Duncan Idaho.</comment></comment>


Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper - <AUTHOR> http://www.3ders.org/articles/20180903-metamolds-creating-ideal-3d-printed-silicone-molds-faster-and-cheaper.html <comment><USER2> It would be great to try the algorithm out if they ever release the code. I've made molds through "traditional" CAD software like Solidworks and the process takes about 30 min. It works pretty well for the typical stuff but I have not tried it with something with a lot of organics shapes like a figurine. The biggest downside about silicone casting though is that its super messy. The costs adds up too since you either need a small vacuum chamber for the silicone or you have to buy the more expensive variant with platinum in it.

Side note: If any one is looking for a lowcost (~$500) "SLA" (it's really UV DLP) printer, you can go for the Anycubic Photon[1]. It should be good enough to make a master pattern without the visible layer lines. A caveat though, the resin based prints are super messy and is a pain to use.

[1] [https://all3dp.com/1/anycubic-photon-3d-printer- review/](https://all3dp.com/1/anycubic-photon-3d-printer-review/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be concerned about layer lines ending up in my final molds. If you look closely they'll end up in your final cast repeatedly. Perhaps this would be best accomplished with a resin type 3d printer to minimize the issue.

<comment><USER4> You've got several options here, none of them great.

1) Use a resin printer and print the meta-molds at very high resolution, then lightly sand with high-grit paper or use a gap filling primer paint.

2) Use ABS, HIPS, or another acetone smoothable plastic and vapor bathe the meta-molds (would probably slightly mess up the split lines though).

3) Use a paint-on epoxy to manually smooth out the meta-mold interiors.

4) Manually sand as best as you can.

The normal process for this would be to print the 3D model you want and then do a bunch of post-printing cleanup and treatment to get it to mold-ready quality, then cast a silicone mold of that. It's not super fun, but you can get good results without years of practice.

<comment><USER5> Re.: 1) The latest generation of 'cheap' DLP printers can do 25 micron (e.g. the Phrozen Shuffle). After curing, dipping in resin again or priming and then coating with 2-3 layers with an airbrush results in a perfect surface finish. No sanding required.

<comment><USER4> Are you actually getting a perfect surface finish that way? My Phrozen Make printing at 20 microns leaves noticeable lines and definitely requires cleanup around support attachment points. I tried doing the second dipping method and ended up with melty details on finer parts of prints. The only thing I haven't tried is sandblasting.

<comment><USER5> The Make can't do 20micron. It can do about 47 max (or rather, min), I think.

Re-read my post: I was talking about the Phrozen Shuffle which has a different screen/display unit.

Check the FB group for some 27micron examples done with the Shuffle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where can I get this?

<comment><USER7> It's a research paper so most probably there won't be any software delivered. Sadly it's not the norm for researchers to release the code or an user- fronting application when doing computing research (or any research). Open source exist but is even rarer.

There's dozens of very useful and advanced creation tools created in labs that never turned into usable application. In some domains big players pick up on the research and include it as a feature, but many advances just stay in labs for ever.

The rare one that are released as usable applications by the authors are most of the time not supported and end up abandoned—quite similar from many non- research software in that respect, but a little more sad as they are often more unique, like for example the free-form plush creation tool from a Japanese lab I remember from several years back.

The most irritating is when tax-money funded labs don't incentivize their researchers to open source their code, and we end up with a innovative software tool, closed source and with proprietary licenses, that is effectively only the research playground of one researcher, mimicking a product but never really turning into a product.

<comment><USER8> > It's a research paper so most probably there won't be any software > delivered. Sadly it's not the norm for researchers to release the code or an > user-fronting application when doing computing research (or any research). > Open source exist but is even rarer.

> There's dozens of very useful and advanced creation tools created in labs > that never turned into usable application. In some domains big players pick > up on the research and include it as a feature, but many advances just stay > in labs for ever.

I call papers like that "Show & Tell"—it's not science, it's just "hey look at this cool thing I did". Which, yeah, it's cool, but as a paper it's completely useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> But 3d printing is not food safe, so using this method for chocolate molds seems unwise.

<comment><USER10> The molds are not 3D printed. Rather, the molds for the mold are. The actual molds used in production are silicon, obtained after pouring silicon into the 3D mold-of-the-mold.

<comment><USER11> FWIW mold for a mold is usually called a pattern

<comment><USER12> Pattern is the object you want to have produced. Metamold is a mold which gives you mold which then can produce your pattern.

<comment><USER11> Ah! My mistake. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can you make silicone sex dolls with that?

<comment><USER14> [http://makerlove.com/](http://makerlove.com/)</comment></comment>


Feastflow – Handcrafted project leads for freelance developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.feastflow.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys I developed Feastflow as a way to help fullstack freelancers make more money and get more clients. I sift through hundreds of leads per day to find the handful that make it onto the list. All of the leads are projects with a budget of 5k+ and have an email attached so you can reach out right from your inbox. This allows you to add thousands of dollars per month to your bottom line without having to spend the hours to find these elusive leads.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated as I am always trying to learn and improve the experience.

<comment><USER2> You might want to review the Show HN guidelines, and if this meets them, resubmit as a Show HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't seem to delete it even though it is a recent post.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Wave interference computing? - <AUTHOR> So after watching something about quantum computers, I somehow thought about patterns waves make interfering with each other. I was wondering if that could be used for data compression and/or computing, but could not find anything.<p>Does it make sense and if does - could someone give me keywords to use for search please? :) <comment><USER2> Probably the most famous quantum computing algorithm, Shor's algorithm for finding prime factors, uses interference to arrive at its result, the very rough layman's version (about what I can understand! :) being that the amplitudes for unwanted results cancel out through interference. See [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=208](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=208)</comment>


Has physicist's gravity theory solved 'impossible' dark energy riddle? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/25/has-physicists-gravity-theory-solved-impossible-dark-energy-riddle <comment><USER2> Looking at the paper abstract it seems like an interesting technical exercise to learn from. One of the challenges with ascribing a tiny mass to the graviton is that all the nice properties (symmetries) we're used to in the context will go out of the window. Maybe there are some intricate tricks which will unlock most of the value of having those exact symmetries.

Further, if the graviton has a mass, then it would be very surprising/difficult to reconcile it with observational evidence. Forces mediated by massive force carriers have an exponentially decaying effect over distance (dominating over the inverse-square effect). That would seriously clash with our understanding of the action of gravity over large/cosmological distances.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good talk on the challenges of modifying gravity: [https://youtu.be/iu7LDGhSi1A?t=1159](https://youtu.be/iu7LDGhSi1A?t=1159)</comment>