This is for the fat ones: what changed it? - <AUTHOR> So, I've been over-weight most of my life. By that I mean that my IMC is usually "Obesity I" but I have "phases" were it goes a bit down to "Pre-obesity". This is usually associated with me having more or less self-control.
I'm currently at a low point where I don't have much self-control, I don't go to the gym anymore, can't control myself around food and don't really follow my diet anymore (created by a dietician).
For those who managed to lower their weight permanently, what did it for you? What made you change the way you think/feel in a profound way that it permanently helped you keep your weight off?
I need to change my life but don't know how for all I've tried, never seemed to last very long. <comment><USER2> The way most people go wrong in weight loss is that they think of it in terms of _problem-solution._ I'll do X thing, then problem Y will be solved and I can go back to regular life. This will never work.

You need to instead completely change your mindset and identity. Start by getting rid of the notion that you're "someone who's been overweight your whole life." It keeps you thinking that any changes are temporary and that the "real you" is overweight and there's nothing you can do about it.

<comment><USER3> Yup it's mostly a mental game.

I was overweight for probably 75% of my life. My weight still fluctuates but I am well within "normal" range, and have been steadily lifting weights for about 2 years.

The first thing I would focus on is changing your mindset/relationship to food. This was the hardest thing for me to overcome personally. I used to use food as a way to compensate for feelings of loneliness, boredom, and general self-hate.

Figure out what is driving you eat with compulsion, and work on finding a way to replace eating with something else (take a walk, meditate, drink a glass of water, whatever it is).

Losing weight is just a numbers game. I honestly wouldn't even worry about being "fit" or hitting the gym regularly at this point. Work towards a healthy weight range and maintain it for a month or two, then slowly add in the exercise you want to. If you change everything at once you will become overwhelmed and throw everything away when it gets hard.

Good luck OP.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I used to use food as a way to compensate for feelings of loneliness, boredom, and general self-hate." This! This applies to me too.

I never thought about the mindset behind all of this. Was always searching for a solution elsewhere but it does make sense. We'll see how it goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I never exercised before I turned 31. I also got fat after I turned 30. Not obese, but 20 lbs north of normal bmi range.

I quickly turned around after a friend of mine shamed me for looking like a over inflated balloon. Here's my advice:

1\. You can't run in front of bad diet. Unless you are exercising as much as Michael Phelps does and losing 10,000 calories, don't look at exercise at weight reducing instrument.

2\. Learn to eat slow. Really slow. Wait for few seconds between bites and chew longer. Give your body a chance to send a full signal.

3\. Aim to eat only a small portion at a time. If you are eating out, divide food into smaller partitions and only eat one partition at at time.

4\. Don't be afraid of throwing food away. It's unfortunate that there are kids in africa starving, but that doesn't mean you have a get a diabetes for them.

5\. If you feel like it, start exercising. But just because you walked for 30 mins, doesn't mean you are entitled to can of coke, a cookie, or a piece of pie. No. Walking 30 mins doesn't even burn 1/2 can of coke.

6\. Remember it's not what you eat, it's how much you eat. Don't start a fucking buzz word diet to lose weight, just eat little bit less and let you body adjust and tighten your stomach so you will be less and less hungry as time passes.

7\. One last thing, eat only when you are hungry. Learn to say no to food. Just because there's a cookie or a candy or a piece of pizza lying around, doesn't mean you have to shove it down your throat. Just because it's noon, doesn't mean you have eat lunch. Just because it's 6PM doesn't mean you have to eat dinner. If you have to wake up at 1AM and eat a sandwich, but don't eat dinner if you are not hungry.

</comment><comment><USER5> For me, it seems like the reason I was content to stay fat was that I didn't have any real motivation to lose weight other than people being assholes to me. What eventually changed that was finding an athletic hobby where the easiest way to improve was to lose weight.

I engage in my hobby 3 days a week for 2-3 hours, and knowing that my present self will have to answer to my future self for why they're so heavy on those days, as well as weighing myself every day and counting calories, helps keeps me honest.

As others have said, this is a lifestyle change. You will never be able to stop doing whatever it is you end up doing to lose weight without getting fat again. Anyone telling you different is a liar. There is no such thing as "permanent" weight loss, the weight is always waiting, always watching, waiting to pounce on you if you let your guard down.

I can't even honestly tell you that it is worth it in the end. People like to sell you this idea that being not-fat will somehow make your life vastly better and you'll be happy, but that just isn't how it works. It actually kinda sucks because you end up associating the enjoyment of food with hating yourself later. All you'll be is in better shape, anything else is a different problem.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is already a treasure trove of info in the comments. So let me try not to repeat and give only what I have learned recently.

I had lost weight sometime back (around 40 pounds, give to take). Life got in the way and got a bit lazy. A few years flash by and I am climbing back to where I was previously.

My lifestyle had been slowly slipping back to old unhealthy ways. So I had to relearn all the habits again. I am 2 months into the change. I am logging my learnings here as much for me as for the OP.

* One can't outrun a bad diet. So exercise by itself cannot help you lose weight.

* But, just calorific restriction makes me terribly miserable, obsessive and depressed.

* Exercise can boost your endorphins, make you feel good. It has a start and stop time. So everyday, you can feel satisfied that you have done atleast one thing that is healthy. It also helps preserve your muscles as you lose fat.

* So I hit upon a plan. Exercise is just for me to not feel depressed. While diet and calorie restriction can take care of the weight loss.

* With that in mind, I could choose the exercise that I like the most, walking. (Previously, I was more focused on the ones that will aid weight loss the most.)

* Walking (or any exercise) also helped regulate the sleep patterns. Then slowly I started weeding out foods that might not be helpful for me.

* A few weeks in, I added some strength exercises and HIIT.

* The scale is not moving as fast as I would have liked but I do see some changes in the mirror and everyday I could run a bit longer, feel a bit stronger and hopefully, the habits are getting ingrained enough to not fall off the wagon again.

</comment><comment><USER7> Experiment.

Try keto dieting. (Even if you aren't insulin resistant, the inherent menu rules can prevent mindless cheating).

Try intermittent fasting. Alternate day feeding, 5:2 alternating fast, fasting mimicking diet (FMD).

Try time-restricted feeding: limit feeding to a 10-hour window or less. 4-hour is optimal, but difficult.

In any case, carbohydrate in non-natural forms should be avoided first.

<comment><USER8> Intermittent fasting is amazing:

\- there is this psychological effect that keeps you from snacking - I'm not going to break my fast just to eat a candy

\- my teeth are healthier, because they are dirty only 4h per day

\- I spend less time cooking / eating

\- I save money by cooking food after work (easy to do since it's basically one meal plus healthy snacks)

\- First meal of the day tastes great

\- I laugh at folks who repeat broscience dogmas (breakfast is most important meal of the day, etc.)

\- there are supposedly health benefits like autophagy but it's hard

Note: IF is only for managing hunger, CICO still applies

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've struggled with my weight my entire adult life. Ups and downs, diets and exercise. In the last six months I think I finally found a method that works for me and can be maintained indefinitely. (I'm down about 60 pounds now.)

To start with, I ceased trying to control my eating. I could do it for quite awhile, but eventually I'd get sick or something would happen and I'd fall off the wagon. Studies on the subject say that caloric restriction doesn't work in the long-term. Instead I just altered my diet. I can eat whatever I want, as long as 80% of what I eat is vegetables (corn and potatoes are excluded from "vegetables" as they are extremely starchy.) My breakfast is frequently two scrambled eggs and a gallon zip-loc baggy fully of peppers, onions and mushrooms. Try to avoid carbs, but don't kill yourself doing so. Sometimes I'll have oatmeal for breakfast instead (with a bunch of veg.) For some godawful reason, "Dietary Fiber" is put under the umbrella of carbs. They don't count because your body can't digest them. Subtract the amount of fiber from the carb count. That's the number you should care about. When in doubt, consult a diabetic website, those folks are magicians at avoiding carbs. Not all carbs are equal, refined sugar and fructose are the worst, so avoid them like the plague.

I exercise every day. I enjoy playing video games, so I got a recumbent exercise bike and I only play video games while exercising. It took me awhile to build up stamina, but now I'll do an hour in the morning before work, and an hour after work. If I'm sick or not feeling well, I get on the bike anyway, and when I feel like I'm suffering, I stop. Make it a habit. As long as I only play video games while exercising, I stopped budgeting for video games. I simply buy whatever I want because now it's a health expense.

I prioritize sleep above all else. Above work, above relationships. Sleep first. If you have insurance, get a sleep study done and see if you can improve your sleep further. Studies suggest that sleep is a more important factor than what you eat, even.

I try to lift weights two or three times a week. I spent a long time overthinking weight lifting. Programs and styles and such. Find something heavy and move it around until you're tired. You don't need to be Mr. Universe, just strain your muscles a bit.

Finally, forgive yourself for fucking up, because you will fuck up. Don't beat yourself up for it. Guilt held me back for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER10> I personally don't believe in "it's up to you", "just exercise self-control". I have phases where I'm fat and after years of being fat, something clicks and I will lose weight extremely fast (intermittent fasting mainly, diet + sports later), and I tend to fall out of those phases & habits at some point. Then I get fat again, and at some point, it clicks again and I start losing again. It's loosely coupled to mental health for me, but that might be different for everybody.

What helps me: identify circumstances and substances that make me eat too much (no alcohol, no thc), avoiding overly stressful days on the job (no, I won't finish this tonight and sustain myself on snickers bars), and medication. I know a few people who slowly sank into depression and never realized that the way they are feeling isn't "the normal state". Medication (legal or otherwise) can help in those instances - it does for me.

It might for you, too. Speak to your doctor about it, and don't be afraid of drugs. Side-effects are shit, but it sure beats sitting in the corner for three years contemplating suicide until you one day magically wake up and get better. Another thing: alcohol, sugar & other drugs are often used to self- medicate.

God, I sound like a big pharma shill, but I really mean it.

<comment><USER11> I agree, food for me is a crutch to self-medicate for anxiety - I haven't gotten to the point where I've got a professional to actually prescribe me something, since I am functioning, I can live my life, I can work, I'm mostly a productive member of society. But I'm slowly killing myself for it.

I've found the medical professionals I've talked to hesitant to give me psychopharmaca. I've excercised in the past and had my weight drop for months but just like OP, I couldn't turn it around permanently. Once stress starts mounting I'm back to not watching what I eat and discontinue things like going out for a run.

<comment><USER10> Regarding "I am functioning", I know exactly what you mean. So am I in general, regardless of what's actually going on. But maybe that's just that you're great at keeping up appearances, not that your circumstances aren't that bad. Maybe it's time to get some professional help.

With psychopharmaca, I think it's about finding the right doctor. I'm not a fan of everybody getting some pills, but a lot of doctors seem to be so hesitant and want to try lots of others things first. Sure, antidepressants aren't the perfect solution, but at least they give you time to figure something else out while the patient doesn't suffer through months and months of "maybe if you just ate more red meat".

I suppose what you, OP and me are doing is mostly treating symptoms: losing the weight. Maybe the weight isn't the issue, it's merely an indicator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. It's not a race. Make small changes that you believe you can do _for the rest of your life_. Try each change for at least a week before introducing new changes, and keep monitoring old changes to make sure you're doing them. If you make a big change like a whole diet plan, you likely won't stick with it. And time-bound plans are useless: people who do 30-day diets are usually fatter six months later. The best plan is the one that you actually do, and keep doing.

2\. Diet to lose weight. Exercise to feel/look good, and become more capable. When you look into how many calories various exercises burn versus how many calories are in even small portions of foods, it becomes clear that it take vast amounts of exercise to burn the same amount of calories as a small reduction in caloric intake.

3\. Look into mindful eating. Slow your eating. Don't do other things while you eat, like watching TV or reading: just eat, and pay attention to your food. Enjoy your food (which increases satiation)!

4\. This is more my own personal experience than anything I have evidence for, but changes that are clear and don't require a lot of research to enforce work well. Gathering caloric information on everything you consume is prohibitively difficult, but things like "no caloric drinks" and "no red meat" are clear rules that eliminate some large sources of empty calories. Those might not be the right rules for you, they're just examples of things you might try.

5\. Consider adding portions of low-calorie foods whenever you reduce portions of high-calorie foods, as this makes it easier to feel full. Carrots, bok choi, and arugula have worked pretty well for me, and you can eat virtually unlimited quantities of these without consuming significant calories.

</comment><comment><USER13> Things improved permanently when I became scientifically convinced that carbohydrates are not food for humans.

I went from obese to slim and have remained that way for years now.

The actual loss of weight was a tough slog of exercise, severe caloric restriction and muscle-building.

<comment><USER14> I'd just like to add carbohydrate withdrawal is no joke. It will make you feel "hungry" in a very specific way, even if you've just eaten and are physically full.

Seems to be the hardest for the first 14 days and you'll be mostly beyond it after about a month (YMMV).

Feels almost like the flu at times (lack of energy, headaches, general lethargic, etc). But once you're through it you'll have more energy than you did before you started, and less up/down swings.

If you want more information read people that either went full Keto, or did things like the "potato diet."

edit: Just to be clear, I'm not trying to discourage anyone. I was just trying to let you know what to expect so you don't worry there's something wrong or are surprised at how challenging it can be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Learn to experience hunger on a daily basis. Wait until you have that churning empty stomach feeling before you eat. Then, eat enough of decent food to satisfy it and stop.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've never been anywhere near obese, having been skinny and malnourished all my life, but I do have much experience indulging in self-destructive behavior such as eating and drinking junk to sate my depression-fueled cravings. My normal weight for my height before was around 120-125 pounds, but I found that I had become 145lbs at some point two or so years into my depressive state. I wasn't working and I didn't have enough money to eat a well rounded diet. Ultimately, instead of spending my money wisely, I bought junk that could sate my cravings and give me short-lived kicks of joy. Long term health doesn't really matter for someone who was planning to die. I believe this is very much a mental fight. I was not someone who cared to weigh myself regularly because I had a consistent idea of who I was and how I look. I didn't know or even could tell I was gaining weight, because I avoided even looking at my reflection. I avoided even turning on the light in the bathroom to avoid seeing myself clearly. Then the day I finally decided to weigh myself, seeing that I had become 145 pounds was a punch in the throat. This isn't me. That was what made me start living healthier again. I started by doing stretches everyday. Then I added a few pushups and squats here and there. It's good to have a routine and schedule so that you can discipline yourself. A undisciplined person will choose to sate his cravings every time, with any excuse necessary. He will make himself depressed if he has to even if he wasn't feeling that bad that day, to create the conditions necessary for him to justify his shitty decisions. Even if you can't go to the gym, stretch for 10 minutes every night or in the morning. You don't have to change your diet right away, I didn't do that. Start by changing the portion size, start by adding healthier stuff and maybe trying to eat that before you eat whatever you normally eat, so you'll be too full to have eaten too much of the bad stuff. Forget the diet, just use common sense. If you're stretching every day, controlling your portions, and gradually eating less every week, then you're on a good path. Gaining discipline will give you more confidence, and you'll start to want to add more to your routine. Just stretching gets boring right? To summarize, it's a mental battle. There's no diet plan, workout regime, or any other trick that can save you. Because the way you are, you will find a way to justify doing bad things instead of good things. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER17> I kept trying different ways to psyche myself into losing weight and being fit. Some worked for a while, and then I had to switch. The most effective was starting body weight workouts, the first time I had ever tried weight training. I didn't try to improve my diet, but the observation of its impact on performance lead me to go meat-heavy, instead of fluffy pizza/burrito food. I can pig out to the max as long as it's on Five Guys, not Chipotle (two side by side options in my neighborhood). That probably improved my mentality over food overall, and I've taken to often choosing "the second option" over what I want: Diet Coke over Coke, peanuts over fries, no queso over queso, one slice of pizza over two. But this wasn't a top-down decision. Edit: Also, workouts changed the mentality from "don't be a fatlard" to "be 99th percentile in fitness" which is perfectly attainable, and positively motivating.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you like to shop for food, buy higher-quality versions of everything. Buy the expensive fair-trade chocolate instead of the plastic bag of chocolate muffins, or the chocolate bar from the vending machine. Or go to a vegetarian restaurant instead of the burger chain.

These measures will reduce your budget for food, especially when your amount of money you can spend in a month is constrained. But you will eat higher quality ingredients and this alone will have a small beneficial impact on your body. Even if you do this to only a certain degree (you still buy junk food once a week, say) it will be beneficial, but more in a subtle way. You might even lose some weight this way, but don't expect too much.

Take a close look at "light" products or "fat reduced" products they are often more expensive and still contain _lower-quality_ ingredients. This also holds for many "vegan" products als well (margarine re-labeled as "vegan butter" for instance)

</comment><comment><USER19> I've never had a BMI above 19 since puberty, so I can't speak as to being overweight. However I did gain (a welcome...) 10 pounds when I moved to the US. I attribute this to:

* my workplace had free candy bars lying around (think Reese's and that kind of stuff)

* bigger portions in restaurants

* temptations for things like cookies and muffins; there were bakeries everywhere on my way to/from work

So I would suggest the opposite thing. Move somewhere with no bakeries or restaurants (rural is good), pick a health conscious workplace or lobby your boss to remove snacks from the building (dangle the health insurance prices carrot if needed). Also you can do a thing I did which is go to work by train, the station was 2 miles from the office. Easy daily workout. I ran instead of walking because the train was usually late.

In summary, you should re-arrange your life to fit your desired weight goal rather than rearrange yourself struggling every day against a life that is clearly pushing back against you.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't know how helpful this will be, but I was overweight (not quite obese) from about age 8 to 24. At 24 I had a major personal event (end of a long-term relationship and end of my life as I had it "planned"). I can't say this was completely a conscious choice, but I turned to exercise as a way to cope. I had always been somewhat active (into sports), but now I got into jogging,then running, then weight lifting. It was therapeutic. I lost a lot of weight. Too much, at one point (hence the weightlifting). Point being, I'm in my late thirties now and have kept it off despite that initial emotional motivation being long gone (I'm happily married with kids, love my life). I don't know that I could have done it without the initial emotional shock, but I do know that before that I thought being fat was part of who I was, and I now know that clearly wasn't true.

</comment><comment><USER21> (Late in, but just wanted to add a viewpoint/suggestion I've not seen already, in case it's helpful to you.)

Simply: I don't think there's a 'one size fits all' approach you can rely on.

I've been mildly overweight for years - not obese, but heavier than I wanted to be, and heavier than is healthy. I've tried various weight loss approaches, on and off: healthy eating, calorie counting, WeightWatchers-style points counting, keto, slow-carb (Tim Ferriss' approach), and the 5:2 diet, all combined with exercise. Aside from keto, none of these worked for me past a couple of weeks - I'd lose the motivation, and drift back to old ways. Living a social lifestyle involving alcohol and eating out fairly regularly helped with this. (Keto was interesting, but my blood lipid values looked quite bad after a few weeks, so I gave it up; YMMV).

What I then discovered is that my individual psychology seems to work much better with strict but easy-to-follow rules in place, rather than a constant battle of trying to not eat the tasty food. So what worked for me was daily intermittent fasting. I don't eat a single calorie until lunchtime (~12 or 1pm) - one or two black coffees work amazingly for removing the hunger pangs. Then have a nice big lunch (making it reasonably big is actually important, as you'll have been fasting for 16-18 hrs; if I eat too small, I'll get hunger pangs mid-afternoon). Then follow it up with a decent early dinner - if I'm being strict, I'll finish eating within a 6 hour window, or relax that to 8 or 9 hour window if life dictates.

This works great for me - I lose weight quite easily if I'm strict for the 6-hour window, and maintain weight if I'm a bit less strict. Also, an unexpected bonus of the window effect is that you'll automatically limit calories, by only eating two meals a day - more is virtually impossible. And it's self-limiting - if you have a particularly large lunch, you'll still be quite full 5-6 hours later, so will have a smaller dinner.

</comment><comment><USER22> When i was looking in a mirror i didn't like myself, i wasn't beautiful for me. Though my family tried to assure me that i'm beautiful the way i was but i hated myself. So i though i need to change myself! I looked thousand pictures on google of beautiful girls, and i took a picture of a girl who's body was just perfect for me. Then i started to go to the gym. At first it was difficult, but day by day i liked it. Also i noticed that my headaches are gone since i'm going to the gym. When i wanted to give up i always had a picture of a perfect girl from internet. And it encouraged me. So it's already a year that i'm going to the gym, i like myself, i feel more confident and i enjoy my every day! So make a challenge and do it

</comment><comment><USER23> Forget all the tips, and find an activity and healthy food that you enjoy. You wouldn't advise someone to power through a career they hate. Being healthy shouldn't be hard either. You should want to do the activity, push yourself as part of the game, and it becomes a lifestyle.

I love martial arts, I love steak, I'm king of the buffet. You can see my abs and my weight stays within the same 10 lbs band since I reached adult size. If I don't work out for a week I can see the fat layer up, but it goes away with just one work out. I can only imagine how I'd look if I were someone who doesn't exercise and eats poorly.

Also lucky me I don't really crave bread or sugars.

</comment><comment><USER24> Rotisserie chicken. Buy one every other day without any sides. Eat half a chicken, dark meat for lunch, white meat for dinner (or vice versa), with a bunch of greens along the way (spinach, broccoli, etc).

</comment><comment><USER25> This book changed everything for me. Dr. Fung pretty much takes a hammer and smashes the eat less move more philosophy into bits. Reduced calorie doesn't work and everyone knows it at some level. Exercise is good for you but isn't a good way to lose weight.

[https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B01C6D0LCK&preview=new...](https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B01C6D0LCK&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_tyyyCbMEBAQ4N)

</comment><comment><USER26> > What made you change the way you think/feel in a profound way...

You may be suffering from a hormonal issue. Peter Attia breaksdown the difference between an how an obese person processes food, and how a normal person does. > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiQevGDPgRY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiQevGDPgRY)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very very interesting!

<comment><USER26> Right on! Unfortunate that some bozo down voted this post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Massively increasing protein intake as a percentage of calories and eating one meal a day. Keto is good but just loading up on fat is basically counterproductive to expending any. Protein is just so much more satiating, plus I've gained a noticeable amount of muscle (picked up StrongLifts 5x5 last fall), which helps raise BMR / TDEE a little bit.

I basically realized if a meal doesn't have enough protein in it, it won't satisfy me, and I'll quickly be hungry again. I don't mind carbs in moderation, and sometimes I'll crave e.g. a meaty sandwich after a good workout, which is imo basically fine. I used to be much more strict about avoiding carbs like the plague. But what I usually go for after a workout is a 75g protein vanilla whey + water shake.

The crazy part is that the FDA recommends 50g _per day_ for a man like me eating 2000 kcal/day (I'd probably have a bit more than 2000 but I've been loose with measuring it recently); my rule of thumb is get 1g of protein per lb of lean body mass - I realize this is over the amount some studies recommend as the maximum utilizable protein/lb LBM, but it just works for me, so I'm gonna keep it up.

</comment><comment><USER28> Keto worked for me. I lost 80 pounds - 320 down to 240 - in about a year. I've kept it off for a year and a half since I went back to a typical diet.

I still have more to lose, but I'm not nearly so motivated to do it. It's also much less stressful to think about now that I know how to do it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Listen the podcast, it seems it's perfect for your problem:

[https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-lose- weight-k...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-lose-weight-keep- it-off/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I just read this [0] this morning and thought it was thoughtful. Hope it helps.

[0] [https://medium.com/not-another-diet/not-another- diet-6a86abe...](https://medium.com/not-another-diet/not-another- diet-6a86abe25803)

</comment><comment><USER31> You lose weight by consuming less.

Cut all calories from your drinks. Water, black coffee, unsweetened tea only. Eat a reasonable sized plate of food for your meals. Favor protein and vegetables over starchy-carby-french-fryish things. Don't eat deserts. No pie, no donuts, no candy. No snacks between meals. You will look like a different person in 1 year.

Exercise improves the strength of your heart and other muscles. It even improves your nervous system. And you will look better. It's very important to exercise your body. but it's not the main driver of weight loss. You simply don't burn very many calories through exercise.

</comment><comment><USER22> Or find a friend who'll share it with you. Go to the gym together and encourage each other. Or take a blog like a diary, let your followers encourage you with their experiences. Show the world your experience and maybe you'll help someone like you.</comment>


How Browsers Store Your Passwords (and Why You Shouldn't Let Them) - <AUTHOR> http://raidersec.blogspot.in/2013/06/how-browsers-store-your-passwords-and.html <comment><USER2> From [http://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/security- faq](http://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/security-faq):

Why aren't physically-local attacks in Chrome's threat model?

 _People sometimes report that they can compromise Chrome by installing a malicious DLL on a computer in a place where Chrome will find it and load it. (See[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=130284](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=130284) for one example.) People also sometimes report password disclosure using the Inspect Element feature (see e.g. [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=126398](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=126398)).

We consider these attacks outside Chrome's threat model, because there is no way for Chrome (or any application) to defend against a malicious user who has managed to log into your computer as you, or who can run software with the privileges of your operating system user account. Such an attacker can modify executables and DLLs, change environment variables like PATH, change configuration files, read any data your user account owns, email it to themselves, and so on. Such an attacker has total control over your computer, and nothing Chrome can do would provide a serious guarantee of defense. This problem is not special to Chrome — all applications must trust the physically-local user._

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is a recent discussion on chromium-dev about the password manager: [https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/ch...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/chromium- dev/password/chromium-dev/r-HQ5vgeFYE/avzJ8kfvYOkJ)

Evidently, only 0.0085% of users toggle on the "Use a master password"

<comment><USER4> I think the percentage is interesting, but it adds nothing for either side of the debate (either for or against). I'm not challenging you, I'm talking about the people going back to that number in the thread you posted.

* I don't even know how to setup a master password and have never heard of the option being available in FF or Chrome. I also don't know what it does. Does it replace all password boxes with a master-password that you enter which then pulls down the appropriate password? Is it a keychain?

Saying "X people don't use this feature" could mean anything. It could mean the feature is buried in the system, or that the feature isn't descriptive enough, or that the feature is hard to understand... it doesn't default to being "people clearly don't want that feature".

[*] I could research it, but I'm giving you my current uneducated opinion to make a point.

<comment><USER5> What's the problem? All you have do is click on Edit, Preferences, Security, Passwords, Use a Master Password.

Easy as pie.

<comment><USER6> Why, that's almost as easy as remembering the new number to dial emergency services!

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ)

<comment><USER7> How about I put it this way:

"All you have to do is go to password settings and click the button"

And you only have to go there once ever.

I think it's usually assumed users can navigate menus, because even if they can't there's not much you can do to help them at this point.

<comment><USER8> Users can navigate menus. But given the out-of-the-way location of the "Use a master password" checkbox, what percentage of Firefox's users even know of it's existence? It's likely pretty low.

<comment><USER9> > out-of-the-way

It's right there in the security tab. TWO clicks.

1\. open preferences

2\. click on security

And it's RIGHT THERE. That's about as obvious as I can imagine it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also in Chrome:

Go to Settings -> Show advanced settings -> Manage saved passwords -> Click on a "hidden" password -> Click on "Show" button -> Voila, password shown in plain text

<comment><USER11> Absolutely! This functionality is present in most (if not all) browsers. The goal of this post was to show how malware could automatically attempt to extract all credentials.

However, that's certainly a good feature to mention!

<comment><USER12> But passwords are already available in plaintext. This fact alone means that passwords are not exactly hidden from the logged in user.

As an analogy, say you have a house and you have a drawer where you keep all your secret information. If you really want to keep the information secret, then you shouldn't allow outside visitors inside your house. You could encrypt the secret information to make it difficult for the attacker to read the information. But he still has access to your drawer because you let him into your house. The attacker can install a remote camera near your drawer to see how you decrypt the information, or he can directly see the decrypted plaintext.

So, don't allow anyone into you house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing I've been meaning to test. Does Chrome's form-autofill (the thing where it fills in as much of a form as it can when you specify an email address) populate hidden fields if they match? If-so, it seems like potential for mischief to create some form inputs of type "hidden" or just some visually-hidden form inputs using style sheets to capture more information than a user is aware is being populated and submitted.

<comment><USER14> No. Why would it do that.

<comment><USER15> I assume a real attack wouldn't use <input type="hidden" />. Instead, you'd style the input such that the user doesn't see it, but the browser thinks it's visible. Extremely low opacity and/or an incredibly small size could do the trick. To provoke the browser into autocompleting data, you might even be able to use JavaScript to fake keystrokes in the stealth form inputs.

Front-end stuff is well outside my area of expertise, so I'm betting someone already tried these ideas and now browsers protect against them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Chrome OSX stores in OSX keychain, out of the box. Which is a fairly secure way to store passwords.

<comment><USER17> Let's assume for the sake of argument that we are running code on both a Windows machine and an OS X machine, and trying to steal someone's browser passwords.

While it is undeniable that the OSX keychain adds a roadblock to the theft, many average users would happily enter their password if the box was displayed when they ran up their browser (even if the browser wasn't the originating process) and likely also fall for a fake keychain prompt.

I think the keychain is a good thing (just as it is in Android). Just wanted to make the point that the keychain for your average non-power user is a minor roadblock in theft, rather than a "real" security feature.

<comment><USER18> Yes, but there is _nothing_ that a program can do to prevent the user from hanging themselves. If an attacker has access to your hardware and user session then they can do almost anything, and at the OS level too.

At least Chrome extends the supplied OS security features and doesn't try to re-engineer them from scratch. This makes me more comfortable with Chrome rather than less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Other side of an airtight hatchway? For this to be at all relevant, you're already got me running your binary with my user's permissions.

<comment><USER20> Or, for example, attacker stole your backup via vulnerability in your NAS. Or, for example, some idiots share whole system volumes in e2k and Direct Connect networks. Or ever web:

[https://www.google.ru/search?client=opera&q=intitle:%22index...](https://www.google.ru/search?client=opera&q=intitle:%22index+of%22+wand.dat&sourceid=opera)

<comment><USER21> Just getting the file would not help you for the attack vectors shown in the article for Chrome (need user account's CryptProtectData), IE-pre-10 (need copy of registry keys + CryptProtectData), or IE 10 (need binary on user account).

Firefox would appear to be vulnerable to that approach. Not sure about Opera's wand.dat, probably vulnerable as well.

<comment><USER22> Opera allows you to set up a master password, if you want it. If you don't want it, you can copy around wand.dat as you like (even from your computer to your phone!) and it just works. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Slightly off topic:

Why does Chrome, when the registration page includes both email and username fields, only remember the email but then insert it into the username field when you attempt to log in? I know some sites let you use the two interchangeably to login, but doesn't this seem like a silly assumption on Chrome's part? Why not remember both, and insert the username OR the email depending on what the field is called?

</comment><comment><USER24> Google recently refused to give me access to my account when I'd lost the password.

While it was intensely frustrating at the time I'm actually grateful that it is so hard to get an account. I provided considerable amounts of information, but it wasn't enough for them to hand it over.

Still, when I got access to my super secret hard copy of passwords, and loaded Chrome onto a new machine, and signed into Google, I was a bit alarmed by just how much stuff came back from them onto my local machine. I'm currently slowly migrating to Yubikey and a nice password safe and better passwords for everything.

</comment><comment><USER25> if I can channel RMS for a second; If you use Windows at this point, it's very clear that you do not care about security as much as you care about convenience. Whatever browser you attempt to put on top of that backdoor/COFEE-infested nightmare matters almost as much as what bikini you wear before jumping into a vat of acid.

That said, It's very good to know that Firefox is the safest of the three. If I ever again have the misfortune of advising windows users on the safest browser to use, I will definitely let them know that it would take far longer to compromise their passwords in firefox (even hours longer!) than the other browsers.

Myself, I'll stick to Firefox with the KWallet extension under Kubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER26> Passwords are a terrible way to authenticate people anyway. The sooner we start using certificates and smartcards, the better.

<comment><USER27> Aren't both of those a "something you have"?

<comment><USER26> Technically, a smartcard is both something you have (the card) and something you know (the PIN). Even if there were no PIN, smartcards are better than passwords:

1\. The public key stored by the server cannot be used for authentication. That means that hacking a server will not give the attacker access to anything beyond that server.

2\. More randomness; there are no dictionary attacks on secret keys, and brute force attacks are hard to mount.

3\. Defense against phishing: the attacker cannot trick you into giving your secret key, because the card does not export secret keys.

All of the above address the biggest problems we have with passwords right now. You are not likely to be tortured for your card or your PIN, just like you are not likely to be tortured for your password. Sure, smartcards come with their own set of problems, like dealing with lost/stolen/destroyed cards; yet these are not terribly hard to solve (banks are able to deal with lost/stolen/destroyed credit cards). The benefits far outweigh the cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Chrome may be the most unsafe browser in the world just because how it gives away saved passwords in clear text with extreme ease. This is such a blatant violation of trust with users that developers who implemented this and thought this was OK shouldn't be allowed to work on anything related to security. They did not understood the simple fact that most users of Chrome do not have a clue about all these intricacies of software security. They use Chrome because they trust it to keep them safe. When they save their passwords they don't get any clear warning that many 7 year old can get all of their passwords in 30 seconds without installing or running any additional software on their machine.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't get it, if there is malware on your computer you are compromised anyway - it could just keylog to get the passwords... so why bother about how secure is to get the stored passwords for a program running on the same computer?

...if there was a remotely exploitable browser bug that would make the browser leak them it would be a threat, but this post seems meaningless from a security pov.

</comment><comment><USER30> Every browser seems to implement its own password management scheme. None of them are as good as the same functionality that already exists in the operating system. Browsers should request access to passwords from the OS when needed, perhaps once per session.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been thinking about this (and the more general keychain problem) recently. Wouldn't it make sense to have your keychain stored on your smartphone, and allow applications access over a standard protocol using NFC/USB/Bluetooth?

Better still, let the phone do the public key cryptography (as in plan9's factotum), so that your private keys never leave your phone.

<comment><USER22> How is your phone inherently more secure than your computer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> His Web page commonly has 128 characters per line. So, on a 17" monitor, the page is just unreadable.

<comment><USER11> Hi there! Sorry about the resolution issue.. I'm using Google's blogspot with settings not adjusted too much (only widened a few things, etc.)

Any suggestions as to what I could do to help you read the content?

<comment><USER32> Thanks for your reply.

The situation is very common on the Web now. My 17" monitor is from NEC years ago, is razor sharp and rock solid, and I see no great reason to take time out to change from it. Besides, as another comment in this thread noted, laptops also have relatively small screens! So do tablets and phones!

I know nothing about using Google's blogspot.

For the Web site I'm building, all screens are just 800 pixels wide, and all my fonts are nice and large. So, on a big screen, could have a 'pile' of dozens of such windows each offset a little, and on a small screen could still see the full width easily without using horizontal scroll bars.

How'd I do that? I'm a beginner at HTML but just stuffed in 800 px some places, and got 800 pixels. If in a browser I shrink a window to less than 800 pixels, then I get horizontal scroll bars.

Broadly it's easy to assume that there it's reasonable to use lots of space vertically and let the user do a vertical scroll but try to minimize space used horizontally so that a user doesn't have to do a horizontal scroll just to read the text.

In some cases, I just highlight the text, copy it to the clipboard, pull it into my favorite editor, and flow the text to, say, 60 characters a line.

My view is, in reading, 40 characters per line has some advantages in eye movement in reading, 60 characters per line is plenty, 72 is almost too many, 80 is about the upper limit, and over 100 is too often a problem and, really, for easy eye movement in reading, too much.

Heck, even when newspapers had sheet sizes big enough to cover a table top, they still kept way down the number of characters per line.

But I can't tell the world how to design Web pages. If some people want, say, 300 characters per line and 20 characters per inch on the screen horizontally, then so be it.

<comment><USER33> Your web pages with fixed width of 800px may be fairly annoying to users with high-DPI displays. Mac Retina displays are perhaps the most recent and well known, but for years some people have had displays with DPI 50-200% higher than "normal", and for these people, your 800px decision looks like handcuffs. If you look back a dozen years you'll see a number of sites that instituted fixed-pixel-width layouts, then abandoned the approach as people bought more large, high-res displays.

P.S.: Yes, some operating systems and browsers now zoom in a way that this doesn't matter so much, but not all, and not without downsides.

<comment><USER32> Thanks.

I don't know what to do about that yet.

If they have a way just to zoom my Web pages, then they will be okay.

But if they have a big screen with lots of pixels, then I don't want my Web pages taking all of that screen. It's better for the UI/UX for my pages to take less than the full screen so that my users can see some other screens while using my site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I use my browsers password store only for harmless profiles, like here and other blogs. The issue I run into most is that a slight url variation, common with webmail, toggles its asking to remember.</comment>


Ask HN: Best book on topography? - <AUTHOR> It must be a lost art, but I want to know the history of topography and advancements of techniques. Any resource, community or starting point would be greatly appreciated! <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if it's still the case but The Elements of Typopgrahic Style by Robert Bringhurst was my bible for picking up the nitty-gritty on typography: [https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert- Bri...](https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert- Bringhurst/dp/0881791326)

<comment><USER3> I actually also misread and wanted a book on typography so thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol, there is a book called Typography for Lawyers, which is decent.

[http://typographyforlawyers.com/toc.html](http://typographyforlawyers.com/toc.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Ghost-ssh means never having to touch ssh/config again - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/ghost-means-never-having-to-touch-sshconfig-again/

<comment><USER2> According to the developer of ghost, the ghost-ssh features will be removed in the near future. Which is sad.

More at <https://github.com/bjeanes/ghost/issues/40>

</comment><comment><USER3> Very useful feature. Thx!</comment>


Letter by Alec Guiness to a friend as he prepares to shoot Star Wars - chestnut-tree https://twitter.com/LettersOfNote/status/451330255244902400/photo/1

<comment><AUTHOR> Amusing. If you can find a copy of Guiness's _A Positively Final Appearance_ , there is an entertaining "Star Wars" story in there.</comment>


Alternatives to Google apps and services and other popular android apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.gadgetsinflux.com/app_games/best-alternatives-to-some-popular-android-apps/ <comment><USER2> alternatives to google apps</comment>


Is Berkeley DB a NoSQL solution? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.oracle.com/berkeleydb/2011/01/is_berkeley_db_a_nosql_solutio.html <comment><AUTHOR> Some usecases mentioned in this article:

* MemcacheDB is a server that implements the Memcache network protocol but uses Berkeley DB for storage and HA to replicate the cache state across all the nodes in the cache group.

* Google Accounts, the user authentication layer for all Google properties, was until recently running Berkeley DB HA.

* Voldemort, choose Berkeley DB Java Edition for it's node-local storage

I know that openLDAP and Apache httpd server also makes use of Berkeley DB. What are the other big use cases?</comment>


CareerHoot Interview: Jason Shen, Ridesharing Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://careerhoot.com/jason-shen-ridejoy/

<comment><USER2> Easy on the tag stuffing there, turbo.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great interview. I've always found Jason Shen to be an inspirational and positive person. A rarity nowadays!</comment>


Photos comparing iPhone 4S and Galaxy Nexus hardware/interface - <AUTHOR> http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/19/galaxy-nexus-vs-iphone-4s/

<comment><USER2> Galaxy Nexus looks huge. Is such a large screen so important for a phone? It's still too small to be usable for most productive tasks.</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone switched to Swift from Objective C? If not, when will you? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone switched to Swift after being released for almost half a year? I don't see people using Swift unless they're working on a new iOS app and for myself, I don't think I'll be using it until I'm forced to. Should I pick it up Swift for the sake of learning it now as suppose to later? <comment><USER2> We had an app early in dev, and decided to make the leap from ObjC to Swift. Swift is here to stay, and as with most things the longer you put it off, the harder it'll be later. The integration between Swift & ObjC is good, so existing projects can be converted slowly.

Avoiding the conversion because Swift "isn't ready for primetime" or "the debugger is buggy" seem like excuses people make for "I don't want to expend the effort to change".

</comment><comment><USER3> My colleague wrote part of his iOS app in Swift. He's now converting everything back to Objective-C due to bad performance and debugger issues.

<comment><USER4> Wow... I was worried about this and didn't make the switch for this reason. Yet, i was about to. Anyone else can confirm those issues ?

<comment><USER5> Switched, more productive due to more static-typed nature of language. Not seeing any problems other than slow Xcode autocompletion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have, for a major shipping product that requires extremely high reliability. The project is ~300 KLOC and about 10% Swift now. I'm so glad I put the effort in now instead of later. It'll be quite an asset over the next couple years, people seem afraid to switch from Objective-C. However, Swift is clearly superior in speed of development as well as code quality.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll switch when Swift is ready. Right now there are lots of bugs and odd issues even when you're using it as a scripting language (how do you import a framework?) and when I try to make something using a C API it ends up being an unmanageable mess of CUnsafeMutablePointers. I realize Swift will never be as good as ObjC at C interop, but it certainly doesn't have to be this hard. On top of that, the syntax highlighting and code completion in a code could use some work (!) and crashes every fifteen seconds (!!). So there aare definitely a few things that could be improved. It was released, like most Apple things, a year too early.

Please note that I am in no way biased or prejudiced against Swift—against my better judgement I was an early adopter and I saw it as something Cocoa really needed. I'm also disappointed it isn't and may never be open source.

</comment><comment><USER8> Currently I'm just working on small apps but I haven't had a problem with Swift vs Objective C. Development is much faster and cleaner.</comment>


The Roots of Progress - <AUTHOR> https://rootsofprogress.org/progress-studies-a-moral-imperative <comment><USER2> [https://rootsofprogress.org/img/our-world-in-data-two- centur...](https://rootsofprogress.org/img/our-world-in-data-two- centuries.png)

I've been thinking about the deceptiveness of the graph on the top left lately. It's easy to look at proportions and see that things have improved, but I don't know anyone who morally weighs suffering this way. When you take the graph and adjust for population growth, we get a decrease from 94 (out of ~100) to 70 (out of ~700). In absolute terms the impoverished population has been reduced roughly 25% over the past 200 years. I suspect there's also a lot of room for error dating back this far, and it's entirely possible that things have barely changed (or even become worse) in absolute terms. I've grown tired of the use of this term; it only seems to obscure.</comment>


Let's build a list of tech influencers in different cities/countries - <AUTHOR> Hello hackers, I was planning an event in Copenhagen recently and thought to connect with local tech influencers to promote it.
I was looking for people/organizations who have the attention of Founders, CEO, CTO, Product managers, Engineering managers - those who manage remote developers.
The search wasn't successful. Maybe there is a service for this problem?
Let's build a list here, it could be useful for the entire community.
Please, mention accounts and their location here. <comment><AUTHOR> Berlin - [https://www.siliconallee.com/](https://www.siliconallee.com/)</comment>


Russia's Putin set to return as president in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15045816

<comment><USER2> I don't think anyone thought that Putin was not the de facto president anyway. This just formalizes what we all knew. At least this way can be held accountable for this country does.</comment>


JavaScript Regular expressions made easy (available in many languages too) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/VerbalExpressions/JSVerbalExpressions

<comment><AUTHOR> NB: the JavaScript version is the first one I came across, but they have versions for a bunch of languages: [https://github.com/VerbalExpressions](https://github.com/VerbalExpressions)</comment>


Twitter has banned DDOSecrets and all its URLs over #BlueLeaks - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1275554481510457351 <comment><USER2> They could just argue that it incited violence and remove it. Any leaked document could be accused as such.

Some might be glad that Twitter goes against hate speech or something similar but this will be the result. They might undo this again due to public pressure, but probably only for a time and you can be certain that anything controversial is in danger of getting purged before you notice it.</comment>


Help and advice - <AUTHOR> https://m.facebook.com/bozziiadventure/ <comment><AUTHOR> Trying to help get an app off the ground which launched today.

I'm originally from the Uk working in Melbourne, and really want to help make this app work as I have struggled to get work here myself (and am aware of how hard it can be for Backpackers) and would love to help others (and feel that this place is ideal for sharing experiences/offering advice and helping find jobs and ride shares).

Any suggestions on how to gauge a bigger audience? Also please give feedback on the app once downloaded - would be much appreciated</comment>


Protection afforded by surgical masks against influenza bioaerosols - <AUTHOR> https://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/rr619.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Suggests 6x less risk of infection. Potentially 55x if taping to achieve better fit on the nose. Their protocol for fit testing is confusing and I suspect wrong. Inert particle test should be disregarded. The machine measures between 1.2 and 0.02micron and infectious aerosols are above 1micron for influenza A. Influenza and coronavirus have similar dimensions of around 0.1micron.</comment>


Self-Publish, don't write for a Publisher - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/self-publish-dont-write-publisher <comment><USER2> This post ignores the fact that it is very difficult to get any exposure even as a traditionally-published, agent-having author. Getting traction in self- publishing is doubly or triply more difficult. In technical writing, it's probably easier than in, say, fiction or literary nonfiction, but that doesn't make it easy.

If your goal is to have a physical book to represent your efforts and offer to others as a side effect, then by all means, self-publish.

If your goal is a) to have a somewhat objective perspective on whether your work is good, b) to get a large audience to pay attention to your work, c) to have any kind of career as a writer, or d) have the best possible (edited and designed) version of your work out there, self-publishing is rarely the way to go. I'm not saying it never happens - there are success stories out there, usually authors who self-publish first and are then picked up by a traditional house to go the extra distance - but it isn't the most likely outcome.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I'm a software developer who communicates well." This is a bad way to start this blog because it challenges the reader to find ways in which you are a poor communicator rather than pay attention to what you are saying. It's like starting with "I have unimpeachable spelling."

</comment><comment><USER4> There are pros and cons to both self-publishing and traditional publishing. Neither approach is wrong or right – they fit different purposes. It all depends on what you're optimizing for.

</comment><comment><USER5> Like others have said, there are pros and cons to both. From my experience, working with a publisher was _exactly_ what I needed, and it's worked out very well. I published a moderately successful technical book (my second book, the first one was awful and sold poorly, the publisher was terrible, but the experience was good to have) a little over a year ago, and, not only has it made me well over $40k in royalties, but it's been bought by foreign publishers and has been released in several other languages as well, and royalties have actually increased in recent months because of foreign releases.

Sort of a point-by-point take on my perspective of the author's main points in his blog post:

I own the copyright to both my books. Didn't have to ask for it, didn't really care, but it seems to be pretty standard among publishers (although I could be very wrong about that, and just lucky). Honestly, I didn't really care about owning the copyright. It doesn't affect my day-to-day life. I've heard of sketchy publishers taking an author's content, re-writing it, publishing under someone else's name, or re-using it in weird ways, but that's not really an issue with my contract, and shouldn't be an issue with any reputable publisher.

Writing for fun? It was fun! Sort of. It was a lot of really intense work, and late nights. But I enjoy the subject immensely. If you write a technical book, money should be a very very low priority -- it's a nice surprise at the end, the icing on the cake. So _who_ the money is going to, or in what percentage, shouldn't affect your motivations or the "fun" you have doing it either way. It really didn't feel like "working for someone else" at all, it felt like it was entirely my project, but I had an excellent support team to help me out if I needed it.

The ability to update whenever you want? Sounds like a bunch of maintenance work pressure. The book was analyzed by technical editors, copy editors, layout people, illustrators, and god-knows-what-else to death before its release. It was stamped with the ISBN number, preserved in the Library of Congress, and it's done. Although I did some additional (optional) editing when foreign translators gave some feedback, I don't have to do anything else until (if) I decide to write a second edition. It's not a constant side project, I don't have to track sales, I don't have to advertise, it's not something I think about much, I just watch my bank account get a big boost once in a while, and send the IRS money every quarter. The publisher sets up book signings and talks once in a while, but those are totally optional, and it's kind of a nice tax write off weekend vacation for me, and I turn them down as often as I go to them. "San Francisco for a week?" Ehh. "Las Vegas for the weekend?" Yes please.

Advanced sales analytics? Sweet summer child, I have a publisher to worry about stuff like that. If I cared (which I only did in the first month or two of sales, before I realized there were more important things in life, like drinking and watching Netflix), I can call them up and get as many gory details and spreadsheets as I want. So really, I feel like I have the best of both worlds.

Money: Yes, it's sometimes a little nuts to see that my publisher has made 6 figures off this book and I'm sitting around saying "Sweet! Another $3k in my bank account!" But I make 25% off of online sales (and licensing, and a few other things) and 10% off of hard copy revenue, so life isn't really that bad. The last time I had to do anything with the book was a year ago, the publisher's probably put more work into it than I have at this point, and they have an amazing network of resources to promote it. My book is in libraries, bookstores, sold at conferences -- and I don't have to do a damn thing to get it there. Colleges that wouldn't even admit me have my book in their library! Sometimes I google "<name of book> syllabus <year>" to see what kind of professors are using it for required reading this semester.

I might seem a little aloof, but don't get me wrong, I LOVE my book, and am extremely attached to it. But, sometimes, you children have to grow up and leave the home, and I'm happy to pay my publisher to allow it to do that. So, if you like ongoing projects, and are an entrepreneurial self-promoting type, definitely self-publish. But I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm have some writing experience, professional teaching experience, and am a full-time software engineer, but not all of us have to want to start our own business to get a book out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the honest opinion! It seems the key difference is whether you approach the book project as more of a singular project vs. an ongoing 'product'. I may want to write more about motivations and try to strike up a conversation about that difference too :)</comment></comment>


Young White Dudes Are Decidedly Opting Out of the Whole 'Job' Thing - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/young-white-dudes-are-decidedly-opting-out-of-the-whole-job-thing <comment><USER2> Fact-light, moral panicky, vaguely anti-white / anti-male filler. That's 30 seconds of my life I won't get back. Hope to save a few readers the effort.

<comment><USER3> The article also fails to provide a single statistic or study to back up any of its claims.

<comment><USER4> From the first paragraph: [https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/millennial- life-how-yo...](https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/millennial-life-how- young-adulthood-today-compares-with-prior- generations/psdt_02-14-19_generations-00-00/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People are leaving the typical job market because the typical job market abandoned them. I don't know if this is me just glorifying the past, but I've heard people say that the the company they used to work for would somewhat look out for them and that it was expected that you would stick around for a long time. Nowadays it's more expected to hop from one job to another.

<comment><USER6> It's sad because we've lost a lot of great developers to this notion that the only way to move up is to move on. It sucks, but it seems like companies these days think they're buying you in at a particular price and it's ok to drip feed you raises over the years, and then are surprised when you move on to another company willing to pay you what you're really worth at that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of an interesting personal anecdote about demographic realities vs perceptions.

It's 1996 and I'm attending an information session for University of Pennsylvania in my hometown.

The presented asks at the start of the session: "Do we have any UPenn alums in the room?" Several folks get up and say "I was class of '67", "I was class of '68" etc.

My first reaction was: "Wow, admissions rates at UPenn are something like 5%. These must have been some smart parents to get in back then."

Little did I know (and which I found out later), admissions rates at UPenn in the 60's was around 50%. Why? Because Johnson cut all of the Eisenhower funding from the 50's so universities had to admit a ton more students to help cover the drop in funding.

I bring up this story because it makes me stop and think about how young people today may be going through a totally different experience than I went through based on some factors totally outside of their control.

</comment><comment><USER8> The story reminded me of myself. Made good money programming for 15 years, invested early in crypto, semi-retired for the last 5 years. Spend days learning technologies, working on my own projects. Nothing took off yet. Thinking of getting a remote job, but they seem to pay little - $70/hr is the best I encountered so far. 5 years ago I was making $90-150/hr.

</comment><comment><USER9> > [T]he most pervasive cohort (white men) are retreating from the labor > force... could potentially bring about a positive sea change in the way > families approach employment

How can the author accept the premise that young white dudes are opting out of the whole "job" thing and not at least entertain the possibility that they'll be opting out of the whole "family" thing too?

</comment><comment><USER10> "He (Madowitz, economist/researcher) believes that men taking on more flexible jobs may help a new generation of fathers become much more capable of taking on domestic responsibilities."

I read this in the article, and I made a link to the recently-HN-front-paged article from NPR about suburban moms entering the gig economy.

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20015638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20015638)

</comment><comment><USER11> When the boomers in HR bend over backwards to get more "women in X" and more "minorities in X", then "young white dudes" are going to take the hint and make their own arrangements.

That, and these kids (regardless of race or gender) are getting f-ed in general. I see so many places paying them less than what I was making in their position 20 years ago, and life didn't get any less expensive since then.

<comment><USER12> > When the boomers in HR bend over backwards to get more "women in X" and more > "minorities in X", then "young white dudes" are going to take the hint and > make their own arrangements.

I, for one, am glad this isn't the 50s anymore. I have a feeling I wouldn't very much enjoy working with "young white dudes" who have contempt for diversity in the workplace.

<comment><USER13> Oh please. Spare the virtue signaling.

There is nothing noble in pushing for equality of outcome.

No problem of lack of diversity will be solved without dragging down or discriminating against some demographic of society without a full commitment to equality of opportunity.

The myopia involved with being suckered into accepting discrimination against one group to the benefit of another being an acceptable approach demonstrates a lack of commitment to understanding the forces actually at work in the world.

Diversity or lack thereof isn't the problem. Equivalent access to the foundational necessities that facilitate successful integration into, and the ability to further develop and meaningfully contribute to the ends of, society's perpetuation and advancement with minimal accidental systemic compulsion is the problem.

Diversity is just the "bread and circuses" perversion that slows down any meaningful attempt at the former due to some mistaken impression that undoing an injustice must involve a new injustice being committed.

Two wrongs a right does not make.

<comment><USER14> Is it a means to an end though? I believe diversity should NOT be measured in the amount of a minority succeeding, but when the measure of the poor is equal across all groups. When Poor black population = poor white population. Diversity problem solved. Before then, work to change systemic problems that cause more poor blacks than whites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> *In the US of A.

</comment><comment><USER16> As opposed to what, young black males?

</comment><comment><USER17> I genuinely confused by people who can't find work when they're actively looking for it. Normalizing for all of the usual discriminators, such as race, gender, body weight, where you went to school, attractiveness, etc. I still don't understand how it's possible to not get a job in the field you desire, if you have the education and will to do it. I think the new generation of college graduates are lazy, and expect everything to be handed to them, and they give up when it gets tough.

<comment><USER18> Maybe you just had luck and lived a sheltered life?

<comment><USER19> Maybe she can't hear you over the trolling.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any CRUD boilerplates available to use with existing DB? - <AUTHOR> I have a mysql database that's got plenty of tables and I can establish the relationships and after looking at a lot of popular saas solutions (sf/zoho/etc) often they come short with arbitrary limits and I rather just work directly with sql myself.
Thinking about just hosting my own so I can do 1M+ imports without an issue (well in this case I just hook up the database!)
Looking to bootstrap it pretty quickly. Simple crud with search and auth. <comment><USER2> Yii (PHP) www.yiiframework.com lets you set up CRUD very quickly with a database, it handles all the relationships too.</comment>


No, really, pi is wrong: The Tau Manifesto (Tau Day, 2010) - <AUTHOR> http://tauday.com/ <comment><USER2> Perfect; to my lisp startup file was just added:

      (defconstant tau #.(* 2 pi))

Regarding adoption, I think it's worth pointing out that these sorts of conventions can and do shift within a generation. I recall quite clearly while growing up the convention for indicating years < and >= the year one [1] was B.C. and A.D. It seems like over the past few years we've definitively decided on B.C.E. and C.E. instead [2].

All it really takes to catch on is adoption by a handful of elementary school textbooks -- and those publishers have adopter much crazier things in the past. As the manifesto points out, this is distinctly pedagogically useful, so it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility.

\--

[1] Correction: Julian/Gregorian years begin with 1 A.D. (I still prefer the AD/BC convention, as the two identifiers have an equal number of characters.)

[2] I'll admit that my perception of prevalence here may be strongly influenced by the fact that Wikipedia has adopted this convention.

<comment><USER3> I have no problem with people trying to do this in principle. I really don't care enough, but other people can.

The symbol "tau", however, is an especially poor choice for a trigonometric symbol, because it's also used for torque. You won't get many physics teachers to change over if every time you try to calculate a torque from a force and radius, you run into a symbol conflict.

<comment><AUTHOR> This torque issue was really bothering me, and I finally realized why: I was pretty sure I'd _already_ seen torque represented by a letter other than tau. Sure enough, I checked my copy of _Introduction to Electrodynamics_ by David Griffiths, which is a popular (and truly great) intermediate E&M text, and there it was on p. 162: torque written as N = r X F. The same usage appears in several other places in that book, and _Introduction to Electrodynamics_ is a standard text, so I'm confident that other sources use it as well. So we see that the idea of using a letter other than tau for torque is not some theoretical possibility—it has already happened, and in a standard textbook to boot. I've updated the manifesto with a note to this effect at <http://tauday.com/#sec:four_arguments>.

I realize that this may not convince you, but I urge you to reserve the right to change your mind about tau. After all, I changed my mind about pi. ;-)

<comment><USER4> I remember vaguely from my time using Griffiths' book that he uses a lot of non-standard (or at least not the same as other, more introductory textbooks) notation. He pretty freely reassigns the symbols used by things that you're supposed to understand, in order to free them up for other purposes.

Or at least that's my vague recollection. It's been a few years now since I've cracked open his _Electrodynamics_. It was a pretty decent book though, better than a lot of textbooks (I kept it and still have my edition around somewhere, something that I didn't do if I thought a textbook was crummy).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really hope this convention gains wide adoption. It's pretty obvious to me that it just makes mathematics make more sense, at exactly the time when it _needs_ to make more sense (people learning maths in high school).

Until then, here's the trick I'm using: whenever I need to use pi, especially when it comes to the unit circle and radians, I'm just going to do it in terms of tau, then convert at the end. I just wish I'd have understood this before I finished my degree :)

<comment><USER6> >It's pretty obvious to me that it just makes mathematics make more sense, at exactly the time when it needs to make more sense (people learning maths in high school).

People have been studying math at schools for quite a few centuries from what I recall. There's never a better time in this case.

<comment><USER7> "the time when" is used here to mean "the period in a person's life" rather than "the period in history".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The demonstration of how to derive the circle area formula was the clincher, especially because of how similar that derivation is to other famous classical physics formulae. That was the only example I could previously conceive for why pi was still useful, but now I see that the factor of 1/2 in A = (1/2)τr² shouldn't be avoided.

</comment><comment><USER9> This bugged me throughout my maths degree.

In particular complex analysis and Fourier theory would be less of a pain in the arse without all those factors of two.

Statistics too, heck anything which uses some calculus.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't remember noticing during my (mostly pure) maths degree that most of the time I was using pi that I was actually using 2 * pi. So there must have been a lot of problems where I would have been writing tau/2 using the proposed system, which I find less nice than simply writing pi. If it's a choice between splitting my writing between [pi and 2 * pi] and [tau and tau/2] I'd prefer the former, multiplication is nicer to look at than division (in my opinion).

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting how people equate "I don't like x" with "x is wrong"... If that's the definition of "wrong" that people use in discussions, I see why science has such a hard time getting through to the public.

<comment><USER12> From the FAQ: "I'm having fun with this, and the tone is occasionally lighthearted"

The claim that pi is wrong is a claim about pi's inconsistency and inefficiency as a matter of mathematical language design. These guys aren't dumb enough to confuse this as a claim about formal correctness. Instead, they're playfully co-opting the rhetoric of formal correctness.

<comment><USER11> It's true that they claim in one specific section that it's "lighthearted". However, that doesn't change the fact that I don't think this is a helpful way of making the argument. Truth and falseness is already being co-opted enough that I don't think anything pushing that trend further should be encouraged. In this case, the "gain" certainly does not outweigh the loss in encouraging this view of "wrong".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As an alternative to tau, I propose the symbol 2*pi.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yay for new obscure geek holidays. Now we can act all smug and say: "pi day? no, I celebrate tau day, you ignorant you".

</comment><comment><USER15> There's a much simpler way to say this, I think. It is already the case that we relate everything to the unit radius---hence "radian". (If we tried to relate everything to the diameter instead, a lot of things would break much more deeply, starting with the very convenient derivative of sin( _x_ ).)

Given that, ask yourself this: do we want a measure of the semicircle, or of the circle? The former is \pi. The latter is \tau.

</comment><comment><USER16> What I would like to see is an informational analysis where you take something like a thousand common equations and look at how they would be expressed with pi versus with tau. If you can show they would take significantly fewer bits of information using tau, then tau would be objectively superior.

<comment><USER17> I repectfully think you may be overlooking two things:

1\. While storing fewer bits may be objectively superior in one sense, it is overlooking the far more significant question of which helps a human understand and work with the equestions. Math is encoded into the universe, but our expressions of it exist for our own understanding.

2\. We get a lot of choice in how we encode information, and that choice can change the number of bits used substantially. For instance:

c = 2 \pi r

c = \pi d

c = \tau r

c = 1/2 \tau d

All say the same thing, but their lengths vary considerably.

<comment><USER16> I'm sure this would overlook many things. It would just supply _one_ objective measure, not the only thing to consider.

Also, while there are indeed an infinity of representations of a given expression, there are a finite number of minimal representations, which can be found by exhaustive search if not some cleverer algorithm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we fix Gamma(x) to be x! while we're at it?

<comment><USER19> [http://mathoverflow.net/questions/20960/why-is-the-gamma- fun...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/20960/why-is-the-gamma-function- shifted-from-the-factorial-by-1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really like this "modest prpoposal." In its spirit, I suggest that from now on we refer to 13 pies as a "taue," sort of a bakers' dozen of pies as it were. Tau Day will be the new Pi day, but students would be inspired to bring and share many times more delicious home baked goods as before.

<comment><USER21> I love the idea, but I think a better conversion would be 2 pies = 1 taue. :) Twice as much pie on Tau Day! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Part of me is saying yes, part of me is saying no. Let me elaborate:

It makes all sense that tau _should_ be the number used INSTEAD of pi: It simplifies things even more. (I hope I'm not the only one tired of writing 2*pi in papers.)

But that doesn't make pi WRONG: It's defined by C/D, and the formulas make perfectly sense, even though you have to multiply by 2. Besides, it would mean a total rewrite of a lot of papers, including a lot of mathematical books.

<comment><USER23> > total rewrite of a lot of papers, including a lot of mathematical books.

Somebody at the textbook publishers is smacking their lips at the prospect of selling an entirely new edition with an incredibly minor change.

<comment><USER15> "Incredibly minor": not even close. This is the very worst sort of change to have to make, because you can't do it automatically, and doing it manually is fraught with opportunities for bugs.

Not to mention that the natural pedagogical order will change in several cases that a simple "translation" wouldn't reflect. A lot of CS2 books in Java--- especially two or three years ago---spent a lot of time and trouble showing how to build a generic linked list using Object, casts and all, and then as a little addendum, introduced "generics" that let you use a specific type. By translating the book from old Java to Java 1.5 without rewriting it, they were losing pedagogical opportunities and introducing confusion. Or the CS2 book in Java that used .clone() all over the place: wtf, until you realise that it's been translated from an equivalent C++ book that used copy constructors a lot. Laaaaame.

So yeah, the publisher that treats this as an "incredibly minor change" is one whose books you should avoid.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for you response - I didn't think about that at all. Unfortunately most textbook purchasers don't have the ability to "avoid" bad texts....

I wonder if there were a way to rewire the textbook market so that teachers assigned different kinds of things...in other words, so that the teacher assigned a student to read a credible source of information regarding geometric identities rather than section 23.6 of a stated text.

Imagine how much more interesting learning would be if students all came to the classroom having reasoned through the knowledge differently? It would be really neat to set up a system that was basically a "hacker news" for whatever piece of information...educators could comment on in-class efficacy & kids could comment on comprehensiveness.

You'd need to charge for it (Unless you could source the books for free) but this is interesting conceptually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As eloquent as this manifesto is, it fails to actually address some of the arguments against tau.

In 2.1, it points out that d/dx sin(x) = cos(x) only holds if x is in radians.

 _This is key_

Once you switch to expressing x in diameterians or tau-radians (or whatever you'll call them), this identity falls apart:

d/dx sin(x) = cos(x) / 2

d^2/dx^2 sin(x) = -sin(x) / 4

...

And so on. The trig functions lose their cyclical nature.

(More explanation on wiki: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonometric_functions#The_sig...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonometric_functions#The_significance_of_radians) )

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but you can't ignore these things.

<comment><USER25> We went over this a few days ago (also it's described in the article, in case you missed it). You are mistaken.

sin(pi) = sin(3.14...) = sin(tau/2)

cos(tau) = cos(6.28...) = cos(2 pi)

etc.

The sin and cos functions are functions of radians, and the arclength of a radian does not change when you start expressing a circle as 1 tau instead of 2 pi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well, at least this is a lot smarter than the "pi is exactly 3!" movement.

<comment><USER27> Or the 22/7 people...

<comment><USER28> I'm born on July 22th (22/7). Still like tau better than pi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How about "omega" as the symbol? 1) It wont bother the physicists as much as tau. 2) Omega has a circular shape which makes it a 'natural' choice for the circle constant.

<comment><USER30> omega is the symbol of choice for angular frequency, which is very related to pi, as angular frequency = 2 pi frequency (there is another 2 pi for you right there).

<comment><USER29> That's omega in its minuscule form. I was referring to its majuscule one.

<comment><USER30> Oh, I assumed that "omega" is minuscule, and "Omega" would be majuscule, just like in LaTeX. That's why I started the sentence with a small letter. I missed your mentioning its circular shape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm just about a math retard, so 99.9% of that went right by me. My only question is this. Pi is supposed to be an infinite number: 3.14... So what would Tau be? Is it also infinite or finite? I didn't see that addressed -- or I somehow missed it in my concentrated skim. TIA.

<comment><USER32> > infinite number

The term you're looking for is 'irrational.'

And tau is also irrational.

<comment><USER33> > The term you're looking for is 'irrational.'

I think by infinite he means non-terminating.

Conversely, an irrational number always has a non-terminating non-repeating decimal representation.

<comment><USER32> You're technically correct, the best kind.

I'd argue, however, that 'irrational' is closer to what he meant, than the exactness of what he said. Any time you move between a layman's understanding and a detailed technical one, the abstraction can leak.

I think 'irrational' matches up with intuition better, even if it's described as 'non-terminating.' People don't talk about 2/3 in the same way they talk about π.

<comment><USER33> > I think 'irrational' matches up with intuition better, even if it's > described as 'non-terminating.'

well, counter example, 1.22333444455555..... is an irrational number, but it's somehow easy to understand rationally. LOL

Also it's worthy point out decimals are heavily related to positional notation. Another fun example is we can use base-e number system for maximum calculation efficiency. Or better, base-tau. So 6.28 in base10 equals 1 in base-tau numeral system.

see:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- integer_representation#Base...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- integer_representation#Base_.CF.80)

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

<comment><USER30> Rational numbers have more to do with ratios than reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I must say, they are some beautiful arguments you have put forward!

</comment><comment><USER35> This is completely logical and sensical and I can see no reason to not adopt it. Which leaves only one very important question:

What do we eat on Tao Day? May I suggest TAcOs?

</comment><comment><USER36> Tau is an awful symbol in my opinion.

If the people who support double pi as the true symbol they should be writing papers with a definition of double pi and truly proving to the mathematical community that pi is the wrong definition. I personally think pi*D is a perfectly sane way to describe pi and that thinking in 180 degrees is just as easy as in 360 degrees.

Once the math community is convinced good luck with engineers and physicists and then the general public.

<comment><USER37> _Tau is an awful symbol in my opinion._

Agreed, mainly because it's already used so widely in so many very standardized ways (including many constants). Of course, most of the Greek alphabet has been used by convention for one thing or another, and people would find it all but impossible to change those habits.

 _If the people who support double pi as the true symbol they should be writing papers with a definition of double pi and truly proving to the mathematical community that pi is the wrong definition. I personally think pi_ D is a perfectly sane way to describe pi and that thinking in 180 degrees is just as easy as in 360 degrees.*

I don't think many people would dispute that 2pi is a much more natural angular constant than pi, the haters are absolutely right, we're stuck with all sorts of extraneous and unnatural factors that are simple powers of 2 because of that "mistake".

But long standing convention is hard to break. Every formula list in existence uses pi, as does every textbook, lecture, and problem set. Every formula that people have memorized is in terms of pi, and that's not something you can alter by fiat.

I fear that however well-intended, this may be a losing battle. It reminds me a bit of people complaining about the negative charge on the electron - yeah, you might be "right", and there are certainly some annoyances that we put up with as a result of the "mistake", but it's over a hundred years too late for that to matter, you're never going to get a critical mass of people to change.

Though I will say, at least if a new symbol is used for 2pi, it's _possible_ to get a few people to change over, since using that notation is not mutually exclusive with using pi (whereas the charge of the electron is a choice that has to be made, and if you make a different one from your peers, there's going to be a lot of friction).

<comment><USER3> _Agreed, mainly because it's already used so widely in so many very standardized ways (including many constants)._

In particular, note that it's used for torque. The formula for torque from force and radius involves a cross-product, so you're very likely to need both the constant conversion factor for radians/cycle and the variable for torque.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> People who suck at satire shouldn't be allowed to title things "A Modest Proposal".

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not satire, but you're right that using the phrase "A modest proposal" was confusing. I've changed it for clarity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> i think a good way to spread this idea would be to pick some wikipedia pages with pi in their equations and add a section demonstrating how the equations are simpler with tau.

anyone know some good candidate pages?

</comment><comment><USER40> I humbly suggest using the Cedilla instead of Tau to avoid confusion with Tau for torque. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedilla>

</comment><comment><USER41> Is this a parody or for real?

<comment><USER42> It's real (see my blog post about it: <http://math-blog.com/2010/06/28/forget- pi-here-comes-tau/>).

<comment><USER43> Note that your equality \\(e^{i\tau} = 1\\) implies only that \\(e^{i\pi} = \pm1\\), hence is strictly weaker than Euler's equality (which picks a sign). I think that you might have meant \\(e^{i\tau/2} = -1\\). (Is there a way to do LaTeX properly here?)

<comment><USER42> I was actually reporting the equality as expressed by the manifesto. See here: <http://tauday.com/#sec:euler_s_formula>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> alternatives since tau is taken: pe, pau, dau, twopi

</comment><comment><USER45> This might have kept me in math

</comment><comment><USER46> I may get down modded for this but I just have to say, this is more like a religious propaganda than science. Throughout the article they have only demonstrated how a particular community is more comfortable with using double pi. I totally believe in what wwortiz said in his/her(sorry cannot open your website) post. If they like the tau so much they should be writing papers on its advantage.

I think scientists should be more concerned about finding and confirming important things than releasing such propaganda.

EDIT: OK I don't usually do this, but I would like anyone who downvotes me to leave a small note on why this time. Its really important to me

<comment><USER21> Your comment doesn't fit the article very well which may be why it is being downvoted.

"this is more like a religious propaganda than science"

First of all, it is about math, not science. And it is not like religious propaganda, which relies on authority or faith. It clearly and cogently explains reasons why using tau is better than pi.

"Throughout the article they have only demonstrated how a particular community is more comfortable with using double pi."

No community was mentioned. Just ideas.

"If they like the tau so much they should be writing papers on its advantage."

The manifesto is exactly that: a "paper" about its advantage.

"I think scientists should be more concerned about finding and confirming important things than releasing such propaganda."

From the manifesto: "Tau Manifesto author Michael Hartl is an educator and entrepreneur." He is not a scientist.

So that's probably why people are downvoting you. You probably just skimmed the article instead of reading it and therefore misunderstood the article.

<comment><USER47> Hold off on the "he is not a scientist" line... the Caltech Physics Ph.D. (a theorist, not some namby-pamby experimentalist) does give Michael the street cred to rant about such things.

Now if only he used his powers for good instead of evil...

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't going to say anything, but I admit that the "he is not a scientist" line did sting a little. Although it's true that I'm not _currently_ suckling at the academic teat, I did spend three years at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as an undergrad and eight years at Caltech as a grad student and postdoc doing research in theoretical astrophysics. I like to think that gives me some cred as a scientist, and I appreciate your coming to my defense. :-)

One reason I didn't hold the comment against the parent poster is that techiferous == Wyatt Greene, and he was by far the single most helpful pre- launch reviewer of the _Tau Manifesto_. He is clearly on the side of what is good and sweet and true.

Speaking of good vs. evil, you sound like a supporter of the Jedi. While it is true that I am a Sith lord, it is my duty to inform you that it is the Jedi, not the Sith, who are truly evil. How can this be? Suffice to say you've been exposed to a lot of anti-Sith propaganda. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> e^(tau*i/2)+1=0 ???

Ewwww, yuck.

<comment><USER49> Did you get all the way down to here? <http://tauday.com/#sec:euler_s_formula>

        e^(i*tau) = 1

Much nicer that way.

<comment><USER50> I actually disagree that that is nicer. e^(i _pi) = -1, which means you can square both sides to come to the also factual statement, e^(i_ tau) = 1. However, if you only knew the latter you'd be wondering whether e^(i*pi) would be 1 or -1.

<comment><USER49> By "much nicer", I was merely attempting to point out that drblast's formula:

         e^(tau*i/2)+1=0

could be stated as:

         e^(i*tau) = 1

As in the article. Whether that's intrinsically "better" than Euler's Identity is a different question, but not what I was discussing here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> shut up and happy tau day everyone!

</comment><comment><USER52> Young earth and downplaying evolution is one thing. But this is downright CRAZY!

</comment><comment><USER53> What a waste of brain cycles</comment>


Ask HN: Why is there so much focus on American inequality but not on Global? - <AUTHOR> Average American is still living a life of best standards than a large part of the world.
Why is there so much focus on American equality and none on global inequality?
Is it accepted as a fact that to have a life of higher European/American standard, it's a must to keep half of the world in desperate position? Afterall someone has to stay at the bottom, then only some can be on the top? <comment><USER2> Probably because people find it easier to empathise with those closer to them than those further away. It's tied to the idea of Dunbar's Number, the concept that people can only maintain relationships with about 150 people closest to them, and find it harder to care about those outside of said number than those in it.

It's not really selfishness or a want for inequality as much as it is a psychological issue that's difficult to overcome. People are simply not 'built' to be able to empathise with 7 billion people at once.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where America goes, the world follows.</comment>


Sports Illustrated shaken by major layoffs and reorganization - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/10/03/sports-illustrated-shaken-by-major-layoffs-massive-reorganization/ <comment><USER2> Thing is that sport was supposed to be the tentpole for broadcast and (presumably) print media. Signs of weakness such as this are interesting. Is the audience going elsewhere, or simply evaporating?</comment>