Show HN: nitr-agent RTM, providing system information through JSON - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/juanhuttemann/nitr-agent <comment><AUTHOR> Nitr is a cross-platform remote monitoring tool written in Golang for system information gathering through a JSON API. The main intention of this project is to provide highly available data of CPU, Ram, Disks, Network and so on, to make use of them in applications such as web administration panels or mobile apps.</comment>


German City to Evacuate as 2-Ton Bomb Is Defused - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204397704577074480191999466.html?google_editors_picks=true <comment><USER2> Somehow strange seeing this on the frontpage of HN (a mostly american(i suppose) tech community).. Old WWII bombss are found pretty often in Germany, and somehow it's non-news here (i think). The bomb in Koblenz was in the news for one day, but certainly not on page 1..

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I live in Germany and didnt' even hear about it although I follow the news quite closely.

Then again it's really not that big of a deal as something like this happens every couple of weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, Der Spiegel says there are about 5,500 bombs found in Germany every year, about 15 a day.

And it's estimated there are still about 100,000 more.

<http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,801397,00.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> This happens several times a year in many parts of Europe. I'm sure there are other parts of the world with similar stories.

WWII isn't ancient history by a long shot.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't help thinking that advances in bomb detonators to reduce "duds" could have helped the war (for either side)</comment>


The surprising reason we have a 40-hour work week - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2013/12/16/surprising-reason-40-hour-work-week-rethink/

<comment><USER2> Anecdote: In a 40hr/week corporate job I was evaluated on time at desk. My managers would tell me I needed to be at my desk more, because upper managers would walk around and check on who was at their desk. These upper managers had come from operations, and had managed production environments their entire careers, and would primarily judge performance on time spent at work. I was hardly ever asked by the upper managers on what I was working on, I wasn't; I just had to be at the desk. Later these managers were given flex time, no set hours. Everyone actually worked longer without set hours. Japanese company.

<comment><USER3> This was a sign that they didn't know how to measure what you were doing, or possibly didn't even understand what you were doing.

The best job I had, the manage was a technical guy, every week we would have a meeting to discuss what needed to be done, what we were going to do. And as long as the projects got done, he didn't care if he saw you at all the rest of the week. He could measure your progress by looking at the project, or by talking to you.

One of the frustrating aspects of working for a big American company was that they had this policy of moving department heads around, so they all got experience in working and understand all the aspects of the company. No doubt this was great for the managers, but the idea that the head of IT could just as easily work as the head of marketing is ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm always suspicious of "We do X because..." stories. Just because the world is complex, and almost nothing happens for one specific reason.

I just can't believe that something so natural and obvious (everyone going to work/leaving at a fixed time) can be attributed to a single CEO and his misguided economic theories.

He might have provided a nudge in that direction, but I don't believe it was an important factor. And yes, I am too lazy to check.</comment>


Ask HN: Computer science for the self taught programmer - <AUTHOR> Can you list the essential readings for a self taught programmer - I'm guessing this will include things like Big O, and recursive functions, etc. <comment><USER3> Computer Science is not just algorithms. Generally speaking, Comp Sci consists of:

Algorithms/Data Structures

Computational Complexity

Discrete Math

Programming Languages (both application and the concepts behind them)

System Architecture

Networks

Compilers

Operating Systems

Databases

Parallel Programming

Artificial Intelligence

Graphics

As for what to learn, here is THE BEST link: <http://matt.might.net/articles/what-cs-majors-should-know/>. It covers all the topics I mentioned, and then some, and provides links to books/resources about everything. If you're serious about self studying Comp sci, that page has all the links and info you need to start.

<comment><USER4> Last time I checked with a university, they dropped half of the hardcore stuff, and teach more Java/Python. YMMV.

<comment><USER3> A sample size of 1 is not representative. If the university is more interested in teaching "programming," then that's fine, but if you want a solid grasp of _computer science_ , then most of those subjects are still necessary.

<comment><USER5> I do. Thank you for the link.

It doesn't really matter what universities do or don't teach. If a subject is of interest you should learn it. I thought everything you and the linked article listed made sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah... so one thing I love about being self taught was that I've learned because I wanted to do a project, and I learned the most simple tools to accomplish those projects. I'm sure I missed some stuff beacuse I was never forced to do it in a class. I think what would be most helpful is - what are the topics that made you most well rounded, that you would be a crappier coder without, that you took during a CS degree. Also, what are some important theoretical things that paradigm shifted your brain cells for the benefit of every following line of code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll start out with the classic:

"Introduction to Algorithms" a.k.a. "CLRS" [http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H- Corme...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H- Cormen/dp/0262033844)

I think this is all (and probably more than) you really "need" if you want to know CS for programming, and an enjoyable read too.

<comment><USER7> I would strongly urge the OP to _not_ use this book. I used it as my undergrad algorithms book and it is, quite frankly, far too obtuse and hard to understand. At first, I thought it was just me and that other people found the book readable. I eventually realized that the book itself is just bad for autodidacts.

Last month (about 5 years after I took the course), I went through to review some stuff that I'd looked at more recently. Specifically, I had worked out Dijkstra's algorithm on my own and finally understood how the heck it actually worked. I then opened CLRS to check their proof. What I saw blew my mind in terms of sheer obfuscation. Despite having a very clear understanding in my head of the core concept behind the algorithm, I read their proof and was just amazed at how little it actually explained about the simple _idea_ that ties the whole thing together. That by itself isn't a huge deal, because some proofs are just hard to follow. What really upset me was that there was practically no surrounding discussion of the _intuition_ behind the algorithm. Behind all the rigor of mathematics lies very simple and powerful _ideas_. This book did _nothing_ to emphasize those simple ideas. It's a real travesty to be honest :(

If you're looking for something more accessible, I've heard that The Algorithm Design Manual[1] by Steve Skiena[2] is better. Whatever you choose, though, please stay away from CLRS.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387948600/ref=ase_th...](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387948600/ref=ase_thealgorithmrepo/)

[2] <http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~skiena/>

edit: I just found this review of CLRS on Amazon ([http://www.amazon.com/review/R2FI8CA368KWGE/ref=cm_cr_pr_per...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R2FI8CA368KWGE/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0262033844)). It's the top comment for this book and sort of gets at the issue:

 _With that said, this book falls short in one MAJOR area, explanations. Too often explanations are left out and left as exercises and there are no solutions to the exercises! Or details are replaced by ambiguous statements such as of "cleary, this works", or "it is easy to see that this ...". I get the concept of learning by doing, really I do, but there should be some kind of solutions so the student can CHECK his/her understanding of the material and sometimes the exercises are not about advanced aspects of a concept, sometimes it is the core material. Even if the solution manual only contained a simple answer without the work. Not only would it help tremendously but the purpose of doing the exercises would be preserved; that is the student getting his/her "hands dirty" and working out a problem.

For the love everything good and pure in this universe, I really wish writers of mathematical books would stop using statements like "clearly this works" or "it is easy to see", "it is obvious" etc. While that may be true for you and your brilliant circle of colleagues, everything is not always clear and obvious to your readers. Save all of that ambiguity for your research paper.

A great book should deliver in two areas; it should challenge and it should inform. The challenge is there, no doubt. However in some ways it fails to inform the reader. The authors should really think about releasing a students solution manual to help students learn better. I take away two stars for the reasons stated about_

<comment><USER8> As far as The Algorithm Design Manual and CLRS is concerned I would not say that they are comparable.

CLRS is about algorithm analysis and formally proving that they behave in certain ways - like proving that quicksort has a guaranteed worst case of O(n^2) and an average case of O(n log n). Being able to work with proofs such as those is fairly fundamental to being a Computer Scientist in the strict, academic, sense. That being said, it should not be used as book to teach data structures or algorithms without formal proofs having been taught first - without the maths background the book is going to be very hard going.

The Algorithm Design Manual on the other hand, is more like a literature review for a collection of algorithms/families of algorithms (75, claims the copy infront of me). For each of them it gives an overview of the class of problems you'd apply the algorithm to, a run through of the algorithm (some with pseudo code) and discussion about the algorithm and times when the author has used it, and then pointers to more in depth sources. CRLS and Knuth are cited considerably, which should give you an idea about the relative stature of the two books being compared here.

Ultimately, they're both good books but for different audiences. The Algorithm Design Manual is by far the easier read, not least of which because it's not trying to be an academic text and is replete with anecdotes from the author. It's an excellent overview of the techniques available to the practicing developer - the ones who work in fields where you might need to whip up a quick Bin Packing routine anyway. CLRS is a lot harder to get through, but it will teach you how to prove that your algorithms will do what they should.

When it comes down to it, I'd say that CLRS is for the Computer Scientist while TADM is for the practitioner and I'm glad I own both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately, at least in my experience, most textbooks are rather unfriendly for self-teaching (including the ones very frequently recommended), especially in the more theoretical fields like algorithms, theory of computation etc. (no solutions to exercises, not enough worked out examples, general strong reliance on classroom usage), it takes a long time to find good ones and even then a very long time to get to a decent speed in a new field, surely much longer then when taking a course. Thus I would recommend relying more on some online courses at least initially:

[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/video- lectures/) \- Very good course covering the most crucial theoretical things every programmer should now

<http://aduni.org/courses/> \- Good discrete mathematics, algorithms, theory of computation courses (I recommend "taking" them in this order) without assuming any prerequisites

[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs- spring-2005/video-lectures/) \- More sophisticated "CS 101" kind of course

I think almost everyone with some programming experience should be able to work through them in the sequence listed in one year perhaps, at a satisfying level of detail. At the same time, many people programming professionally lack mastery of this basic material.

</comment><comment><USER10> Suggested books HN post from about a month ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3595599>

</comment><comment><USER11> I've found The Little Schemer[1] to be very approachable and effective for grokking common CS concepts.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Schemer-4th- Edition/dp/0262...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Schemer-4th- Edition/dp/0262560992)

<comment><USER12> I'm reading/working through this book now and can't recommend it enough, especially for those with limited time (or limited ability to focus and study due to environmental factors). I've worked through most of the first two chapters of SICP, but honestly felt a little overwhelmed at times. TLS has been enlightening AND fun. The format is genuinely unique and well-suited for reading/thinking in the small slivers of free time I have between work, kids, freelance, Khan academy, etc.

Most exercises don't require an interpreter, which is nice if you need a break from screentime. But I do enjoy working through some of them in Racket or even Pixie Scheme. TLS isn't free or available in a digital format (AFAIK), but the book is inexpensive and very portable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Learn you lots of Algebra; then go learn you some functional programming (in particular LISP, HTDP: How To Design Programs and SICP are great for this).

Then I would pick up Randall Hyde's books on "How to Write Great Code" series - he starts out with machine fundamentals (stuff you would typically learn in an Assembly or computer engineering course minus the Assembly).

Then I would learn some type of Assembly (again I recommend Randall Hyde).

Then, IMHO follow @BlackJack's comment of subject matter.

NOTE: I'm a self educated programmer.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you're not intimidated by a little C, I highly recommend "Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective"[1] by Bryant and O'Hallaron from Carnegie Mellon. It was personally recommended to me by a PhD student from CM when I inquired about CS resources that would be directly pertinent to programmers, and it completely exceeded my expectations.

[1] <http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/>

<comment><USER15> I took the class that this book was written for when I was at CMU, and it's an excellent book. If you're a programmer with some understanding of C (read: pointers don't fill you with terror), this book will give you a solid overview of systems programming (how programs are laid out in memory, basic assembly, optimization, cache behavior, sockets, multithreading).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not clear if you are looking for books, links, or topics. If you are looking for topics or books, I'd suggest starting by taking a look at the syllabi from degree programs that you respect. You may want to pay particular attention to the courses that have the word "Theory" and "Computation" in them.

You are going to find topics like:

      * Regular Languages/Expressions
      * Automata
      * Nonregular Languages
      * Context Free Languages
      * Turing Machines
      * Decidable vs. Undecidable Problems
      * Halting Problem

You can probably get a long ways just doing some searches for those topics.

I written about some of these topics in an article last year that might give you a very small introduction to finite state machines: [http://blog.markwshead.com/869/state-machines-computer- scien...](http://blog.markwshead.com/869/state-machines-computer-science/)

</comment><comment><USER17> What is it that you wish to learn? If you're a self-taught programmer who wants to learn (to use an extreme example) bricklaying, then you won't have much use for the standard undergrad CS reading list. Similarly, if you want to be a better programmer, the list will be different to that of the standard undergrad CS reading list. Can you tell us what your goal here is? Do you actually want to do CS, or do you want to fill in some of the theoretical gaps that might be useful to you as a coder, or do you actually not care so much about the theory and just want to be a better programmer?

<comment><AUTHOR> > do you want to fill in some of the theoretical gaps that might be useful to > you as a coder, or do you actually not care so much about the theory and > just want to be a better programmer

Definitely yes, and yes. I suppose I want to see a few examples of writing better code, see how and why things break when they scale, understand useful principles that I just "worked around" before (ie recursive functions), and then also some primers on other subjects - so for example I studied poli sci, but they made me take anthropology, geography, economics and some other related but not completely aligned fields. What are some examples to complement web dev?

<comment><USER12> Same boat here. I've really only skimmed 'Think Complexity: <http://greenteapress.com/complexity/index.html> but it looks like a nice, digestible introduction to a broad range of topics. If you want to get more (way more) in-depth, have a look at 'Mathematics for Computer Science': <http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/spring12/mcsfull.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Programming, Learn by Doing:

For programming specifically you can learn by doing more than reading. Just like Maths you have to have solved a problem or two. So hope the following inspires you and in the case of codeschool's rails for zombies or code academy - it means you can learn by doing.

<http://www.codeschool.com/> Kicks ass. Unless you are scared of zombies.

<http://www.codecademy.com//> YC Startup if I remember correctly. Beautiful.

Computer Science, Turing Turing Turing:

For some serious inspiration the first ever essay we wrote at Manchester in Year 1 of CS was The Life and Times of Alan Turing. His huge impact still hadn't hit me then. The story of Alan Turing is told in so many different ways that to learn about him is to learn about the type of mind that led us to where we are now. His impact at Bletchley Park breaking the German Enigma code, then at Manchester his work not only seeded AI as we know it but showed how Mathematics could help us understand the code behind nature. These deep roots of CS are what keep you going through the more incomprehensible CS books and difficult challenges.

<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/> <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Turing> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/alan_turing>

I just found this:

Breaking the Code: Biography of Alan Turing (Derek Jacobi, BBC, 1996) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23yie-779k>

Looks like I am staying up working a little longer! If only BBC Programs could be streamed on demand I would pay for one daily. There were numerous programs on Turing including an episode from the series The Code - Numbers which was the type of programme that should always be available to the world and makes you wonder why the BBC doesn't unleash it's potential... Another story...

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012xppj> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/alan_turing>

I really value all the helpful comments here - thank you for your practical advice guys ;-)

</comment><comment><USER19> Not to discourage further discussion but there are a lot of good resources here:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A(se...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A\(self+taught\)&sortby=points+desc)

</comment><comment><USER20> A list for a programmer and a list for a computer scientist would look quite different.

<comment><USER13> This is not a helpful comment. Additionally I do not agree - while there is a difference between academically focused individuals and industry focused individuals they absolutely _should not_ be mutually exclusive. That's a social generalization in our industry everyone should be working to dismantle.

I'm an industry programmer and pursued a lot of Comp Sci self-study in order to become a "better programmer", an "effective programmer", and most importantly "better able to reason about my programs".

Being versed in both is important so the reading list, IMHO, should be mixed!

<comment><USER18> Very well put. I would say the opportunity when self taught is that you can focus on the areas or challenges that excite you the most. "Getting close to the metal with C" is a good example of someone interested in taking things apart and seeing the gears turning the wheel. I studied CS at university specifically to understand how a machine could make chuckie egg jump or dragon ninja kick. You start with Binary, Machine Learning play with some C or Java and suddenly the magic was more than magic - mathematics. Immerse yourself and enjoy it is the most important thing. Back to the point - agreed - <USER2> and computer science can never be mutually exclusive. Everyone's comments on here have me officially addicted to HN. About time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I asked a similar question a while back: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3226708>

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd look at the online courses that are starting to be offered. Coursera, MITx, etc. There's a lot of foundational stuff in those courses.

</comment><comment><USER23> what do you guys think of <http://bottomupcs.com> ? I just started reading it and feel I've learned a lot already but it feels very unfinished. I wish they would keep the same pace but go more in depth in each topic.

</comment><comment><USER24> hackershelf.com is a good place to source for hacker books, most of them are free.</comment>


All Present-day Life Arose From A Single Ancestor - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/59133/title/All_present-day_life_arose_from_a_single_origin <comment><USER2> We could call her Bacteria Zero and build a whole religion around her life and times...

<comment><USER3> Deus Ex Bacteria. Shirley, this ancestor could be referred to as "God".

<comment><USER4> Truly the father (mother?) of all life!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ohhh, occasion to post my favorite first line of a book the second time in so many days! Neal Stephenson, first line of chapter 1 of Cryptonomicon:

"Let's set the existence-of-god issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate. After about three billion years of this sometimes zany, frequently tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, Godfrey Waterhouse IV was born, in Murdo, South Dakota, to Blanche, the wife of a Congregational preacher named Bunyan Waterhouse. Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self- replicating gizmo--which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead."

</comment><comment><USER6> this was covered on The Onion already last week:

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/7-million-people-direct- des...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/7-million-people-direct-descendants- of-single-smoo,2762/)

</comment><comment><USER7> But even more likely was single-ancestor with some gene mingling. So a bit of both.

Seems like a bit of a false dichotomy going on here as this is a "degree of" question and not an either-or question (If I understood the article correctly)

<comment><USER8> No, it is two different dichotomies. One is one-ancestor vs. multi-ancestor, with the first being correct. The second is no gene transfer between descendants vs. gene transfer between descendants, with the second being correct. So there was only one species to begin with, but then later, after it diverged into multiple species, those branches traded genes back and forth.

<comment><USER9> "So there was only one species to begin with"

The idea that all life shares a common ancestor does not mean that there was only one species to begin with. There could have been many species who contributed genetic material to a common ancestor, and then eventually died out. The article is poorly written because it doesn't make it clear whether the gene swapping occurred before or after the common ancestor.

<comment><USER7> I went back and re-read the article.

I took it at first to mean common ancestor in terms of a single ancestor for a particular species. But then you guys seem to think it means a common ancestor for all life.

I found it confusing. Meta: I have no idea why my comment was voted down so much. I did not understand it, and I still do not. Seems like an admission of that along with an explanation from other commenters would be a good thing, right? Saying I don't know and having people help me -- reason for the board, or not?

<comment><USER9> I have no idea what's up with comment moderation, but it's clearly been going downhill. It's probably best to just ignore it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IRobot Packbots take first pictures from inside Fukushima reactor buildings - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/robots-inside-japanese-nuclear-plant-find-radiation-still-too-high/article1989096/

<comment><USER2> They should just send in a couple of roombas to clean up the mess.</comment>


How Scribd's HTML5 conversion works ... even when it shouldn't - <AUTHOR> http://coding.scribd.com/2010/08/26/plan-b-font-fallbacks/ <comment><USER2> My respect for how hard it is to convert from .pdf to HTML just went waaaay up. Scribd must have really thought displaying in HTML5 was worth a lot of trouble if they went to all this effort to be precise!

<comment><USER3> Whilst technically impressive, it reminds me of the 'NASA spent millions developing a pen that writes in space vs Russians used a pencil'.

Googles competing pdf reader just renders pdfs into images which also have selectable text.

<comment><USER4> As for the NASA story, you might find this link interesting: <http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't have any particular use for Scribd but I love them anyway.

Any company that can kick Adobe in the nuts by publicly reconfiguring their business to shun Flash is all right with me. And what technical prowess these guys have. Incredibly smart people there.

<comment><USER6> I've put a few PDFs of presentation slides on scribd, and then used their widget to embed those slides directly into a blog post talking about the presentation. Linking to a PDF on another page (and asking many people to a) open acrobat, b) download a multi-MB file from my host) and/or hosting that PDF yourself is sub-optimal. Let scribd host it (you can provide a link to download the actual content you uploaded, rather than their web widget), and pay for the bandwidth. I never saw the use for it, until I started giving talks and wanting to embed them. It's youtube for PPT :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Weirdness. They have a section titled "Detecting the font family", where they're supposedly comparing Trebuchet and Courier, but in the example they show Trebuchet and _Myriad_.

</comment><comment><USER8> Idle thought - would it be possible using layers to do selectable text in an image - top layer is 100% transparent text, 2nd layer is the image. The font face is preserved (though it still won't wrap), but the text is still selectable for copy and paste.

<comment><AUTHOR> Browsers are "smart"- they won't let you select text that's 100% transparent. 99% transparency works... but also looks kind of weird if the texts don't overlap perfectly.

You can roll your own text selection in javascript (on top of the bitmap) if you know the glyph positions though- that's what e.g. Google Books does. It's a valid option if you don't care about zoomability.

<comment><USER9> Are you sure? I just made a quick test and it works ok in FF, Opera, Chrome, Safari, IE9 (Windows 7, Ubuntu 9.10):

       Hello world

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't find being able to view the mangled pdf on screen worth the time saved downloading the actual pdf. With video and audio I can understand the benefit of in-browser viewing, but why do we need this service for pdfs anyway?

<comment><USER11> It's horribly confusing to someone who doesn't understand that it's not being rendered by the browser itself. PDF's (especially when rendered inside the browser) break the browsing experience.

Your browser controls stop working as expected, history gets bent, links don't work as expected. All of a sudden you're now working within an Adobe Reader application or FoxIt Reader (albeit embedded in the browser) without even realizing you're in an entirely different context outside of an HTML page.

<comment><USER12> Links and history work as expected (at least in the browsers I know with native PDF support) and I'm not sure why it is bad that some users might not understand that a PDF document is not a HTML page.

I also don't know how Scribd helps users understand that better. Seems horribly confusing to me if you don't follow them closely. (Wait what? The PDF is suddenly a webpage? But sometimes Flash? I can still download the PDF? Why doesn't it look exactly like the webpage? What's going on?) It's perfectly usable, even without a deep grasp of the concepts, but so are PDF viewers inside browsers.

<comment><USER13> The problem historically with plug-in PDF readers was that the Adobe one was very slow. That seems to be fixed now - though I can't tell if the software is better or I just use faster hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Matthias At Work</comment>


Study: Sleep interruptions worse for mood than overall reduced amount of sleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.psypost.org/2015/10/sleep-interruptions-worse-for-mood-than-overall-reduced-amount-of-sleep-study-finds-38920 <comment><USER2> As a person with two very talkative and aggressive Siamese cats, this rings a bit too true as well. Before I got together with my wife (she chooses cats over children) I had continuous sleep quite regularly in my life and now I can hardly have a night anymore where I'm not woken at some ungodly hour of the night by a hungry cat. Nowadays, I'm significantly more irritable and foggy headed than I've been in my life (granted, it's not just the sleep irregularity I'd guess but it's quite significant to casual observers like friends it seems). When I go on vacation or business trips I'm in so much in better control of my mood (week long trips are much more productive than a month at home) I'd rather have two red eye flights in a week than stay at home for a few days.

I liken having these cats to having perpetual toddlers - they're cute and affectionate but they're incredibly nasty and can be exhausting to keep up. Sometimes I wonder if having children would be aggregately in my less taxing.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure its the cats, but you might want to get a Carbon Monoxide detector just in case: [https://np.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34l7vo/ma_posti...](https://np.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34l7vo/ma_postit_notes_left_in_apartment/cqvrdz6?context=3)

<comment><USER2> I hardly ever get headaches and I have three CO detectors in the house that I changed the batteries and tested when I moved in, but I didn't know about the symptoms of CO poisoning in non-lethal doses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My understanding is that REM sleep is the most important bit of sleep[1], and ever sleep cycle (~1.5 hours) you get more REM sleep than the previous cycle.

While I haven't run the numbers in years, I remember comparing the total amount of REM sleep between someone who slept 7.5 hours (5 cycles) straight vs. someone who slept 9 hours, broken into half (3 cycles and 3 cycles) and finding out that the 7.5 hours got more REM sleep overall.

Granted, this is a very rough calculation based on average numbers of a very simplified explanation, but it would be an interesting issue to research.

[1]per our current understanding of the brain, which is quite lacking overall.

<comment><USER5> common misperception but not true [1]. All phases are important and REM comes last so it's easy to say it's the most important, because it gets cut short most easily.

yes, you are right about the increasing amount of REM in each cycle.

Overall, if you are relatively healthy, sleep shouild be straightforward - black out your room, eliminate random noise like cats jumping on you and don't turn on an alarm.

[1] Source: I ran a sleep medicine business for 5 years but don't have time to officially source this

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always find it soothing when a study supports what seems empirically true about the human body. So much research into the brain (especially where it intersects with the rest of the body, e.g. sleep) seems paradoxical & contradictory.

Unrelated: the ads at the bottom of this site really do a masterful job of demolishing it's credibility... wow.

<comment><USER7> Wow, you weren't kidding.

Screenshot for those with ad-blocking software (mildly nsfw): [http://i.imgur.com/Aq1lWNe.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Aq1lWNe.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can anecdotally confirm and at the same time fail to confirm these findings. Since recently I am awoken about 1—2 times per night. Yet, the noise is only disturbing enough to awake me in between my sleep cycles. I have not noticed any mood changes.

However after my son was born I definitely noticed a considerable drop in mood due to being awoken randomly at night. (It was also roughly 1—2 times a night)

I wonder if the stage of the sleep cycle—one is experiencing—would influence the mood changes.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a parent with a small baby I can anecdotally validate this.

<comment><USER10> As a parent with a small baby, I support your claim and feel your pain... I also found out that the status/quality of the parents' relationship is totally dependent on the baby's sleep.

<comment><USER11> As a parent of an older child, I can assure you: It will get better.

One tip I found especially helpful when trying to let my child sleep through the night: Try not to be on their side, when they fall asleep. If they wake up during the night and you're gone, they will more likely stay awake and call for you. When you were not there when they fell asleep. They will more likely sleep again without calling for you, when they wake up. A person usually wakes up several times per night. It is important to make it as easy as possible to fall asleep again when that happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a parent with a 13 month old I can also confirm this for us.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is one of the more insane articles I've read.

'Delayed bedtime group' \- great, but were they delayed by one minute, one hour, or 4 hours? How much sleep did the delayed bedtime group get? It seems highly relevant to the article.

<comment><USER14> If you clickthrough to the _Sleep_ link: [http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=30292](http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=30292) , you can download the fulltext through Sci-hub [https://www.dropbox.com/s/sqq41vhyji9pjws/2015-finan.pdf](https://www.dropbox.com/s/sqq41vhyji9pjws/2015-finan.pdf) / [http://sci- email@example.com...](http://sci- firstname.lastname@example.com@generic-F17905026CA9.pdf)

The delayed amount was not a fixed amount but calibrated to another subject's total sleep, so you can't say exactly how much each one was delayed by overall:

"RSO During Nights 2–4 of RSO, subjects' total sleep opportu- nity period was restricted and yoked to the amount of total sleep time achieved by a matched subject in the FA group. This was accomplished by delaying the RSO subject's bedtime and keeping a fixed wake time. For example, if an FA subject achieved 210 min of total sleep time on Night 2, the yoked RSO subject would be provided a 210-min opportunity for undisturbed sleep (bedtime 03:30, wake time 07:00) on Night 2\. Subjects in the RSO condition were monitored polysomno- graphically for an entire 8-h period."</comment></comment>


San Francisco has more drug addicts than students enrolled in public high school - <AUTHOR> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/san-francisco-fact-of-the-day.html <comment><USER2> There are less high school students in SF, period. There are less children in general. This is due to a large number of variables I don't see being controlled, and a severe lack of source information.

I'm much more worried about the 10%+ dropout rates.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, there are a ton more kids (especially pre-school age kids) in my neighborhood than there were when I moved here 8 years ago.

The combination of high housing prices in Bay Area suburbs and more yuppies willing to stay in the city has noticeably altered the demographics. There are now fewer groups of single 20-somethings walking about, and more families.

I will be curious to see the numbers at the next census.

<comment><USER4> Our pre-school age kid (mission/noe area), my brother's kid, and a number of his friends all moved out of the city before they reached school age. (Some to the bay area and other's further out.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do people actually like SF? I try to avoid going there as much as possible. It's not even really a _city_ , but more just a place where exurbanites congregate from 9 to 5 to conduct commerce. I've never encountered a more soulless, hollow, and overall depressing place in my entire life.

<comment><USER6> I've been in SF for 6 months and it's the best city I've ever lived in. Walking is one of my favorite activities and I can get everywhere by foot. A bus line on every street or $5 Lyft if I need to move quicker. The weather is amazing. There's a tech-first culture with hundreds of free events everyday.

I doubt you've had a chance to explore the city district-by-district if you think it's soulless.

There are many homeless people but they don't bother anyone and they're a product of the city's open culture.

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, what other cities have you lived in?

I've lived in few (San Diego, Boston, Phoenix, Los Angeles), visited many more in the US and abroad for work, I'd rank San Francisco near the bottom of the pack.

This might not be the case for you, but many people I've met who really love SF moved here in their 20s. Any city is going to be amazing at that age -- you're young and independent and thriving on the new experiences a city provides. Naturally, you're going to form an attachment.

Most people who move to SF later in their life seem less tolerant of its many problems.

<comment><USER8> Getting kind of off topic, just curious (as someone who has visited all the cities on your list as well as SF and lived in another five cities): what is the soul of Phoenix? My impression (from an admittedly short trip) was that of a souless wasteland where people moved from ACed building to ACed building by ACed car. It was like the outdoors was a minefield or something.

Not saying my impression was right. Maybe there are limits on what can be gleaned from a trip, as suggested by the parent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 24,500 injection drug users in SF means they are classifying one in in every 36 people as a "drug addict". This amount, if true, is over 20x higher than the national mean. Maybe it's true, but I find it difficult to believe that 1 in 32 SF adults are shooting up.

<comment><USER10> After visiting there last year, I think this number is believable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> San Francisco has more Doggy Day care than Kid Day care...

</comment><comment><USER12> It's

San Francisco has more (drug addicts) than (students enrolled in highschool)

not

San Francisco has more (drug addicts than students) enrolled in highschool.

I'm ashamed to admit I had to follow all the way to the source PDF to figure that one out.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand the second forumulation. What is (drug addicts than students) as an entity?

<comment><USER14> I think the parent is implying students can be drug addicts, and the drug addict figure is a set that include high school students.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The homeless population in SF is insane. The sidewalks smell like piss and occasionally you try not to step over human feces. At this point I'm surprised that a hot startup in SF hasn't invented an industrial grade Roomba to clean up the sidewalks.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a strange statistic - high school encompasses only 4 years of a person's life, whereas there's no (practical) limit on when someone can be an addict.

<comment><USER17> It helps put in perspective on just how many addicts there are.

Using a number like 25000 is difficult to understand in your head.

4 years is a lot of time!

You probably see or are aware of high school age individuals throughout your day-to-day.

Now imagine for every 1 high school age young-adult, your city also has 1.5 injection drug addicts.

I think that puts things in perspective pretty well.

<comment><USER16> For a city like SF, probably more illustrative to show how many addicts there are for each programmer or Tesla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Comments on the website are so weird. Is it a legitimate news source?

<comment><USER19> The Marginal Revolution comments section is famously terrible compared to the above the fold content. You can follow links provided to the source material though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Shouldn't this be linking to the the source article rather than a block post that just quotes two lines of it?

[http://www.sfusd.edu/en/assets/sfusd-staff/about- SFUSD/files...](http://www.sfusd.edu/en/assets/sfusd-staff/about- SFUSD/files/sfusd-facts-at-a-glance.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> I think the title is somewhat misleading. When they discussed this on NPR yesterday it was "more street injection drug users" than high schoolers.

I have no doubt there are more drug addicts than high schoolers. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any major city where that isn't true. If your definition of a drug addict is anyone who uses drugs (including marijuana) regularly.</comment>


On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit - <AUTHOR> http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.html <comment> java-man "In On Bullshit, the philosopher Frankfurt (2005) defines bullshit as something that is designed to impress but that was constructed absent direct concern for the truth. This distinguishes bullshit from lying, which entails a deliberate manipulation and subversion of truth (as understood by the liar)."</comment>


Yahoo Groups Archiving Progress - <AUTHOR> https://data-horde.blogspot.com/2020/01/saving-private-groups-this-time-mission.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand why Yahoo or whoever is orchestrating this shutdown is so hostile to the archival process. People are offering their own time and storage space, how hard would it be for whoever is working on the shutdown to just allow people to easily download all the raw data, instead of having them manually scrapping. Wouldn't the latter be much worse for both parties?

This is data going back decades, there has to be someone in power somewhere on that team that realizes the value of this data? We're not asking them to keep it up, just to make it easy to archive.

<comment><USER3> sometimes people want to let things die and for good reason. i can only image what a burden it has been to police something like a newsgroup server over the years. i can also imagine that they haven't caught everything, so they just want it to go away.

remember that not everything is precious and needs to be reserved.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree, but the way they handled this was appalling:

(a) The "We're deleting all your content" message was only visible on group home pages, not when viewing messages, meaning a lot of the people who used the web-interface didn't know about the shutdown.

(b) The email sent out to all members about the deletion was sent weeks after the initial notice, often didn't arrive, and was inaccurate (dates had changed by the time people received the email). So many folks that used the email interface also didn't know about the deletion.

(c) The amount of time given was far too short. Yahoo Groups had existed as a brand since January 2001, and was based off Yahoo Clubs / eGroups, both of which had existed for several years before that. Two months notice for a 20+ year old service is laughable.

(c) The site has been unreliable during the last few months, due to the high traffic of people trying to save their stuff. This has significantly complicated efforts to archive it.

(d) Yahoo's solution to the data destruction, their "Get My Data" feature, is poorly thought out and often doesn't work. No photos are included in the download unless uploaded by that account. Many groups had members who uploaded photos / scans / schematics / etc.. and since left the group. Those photos are now lost. We've also found the downloads to be missing content that necessitated the request be made multiple times until you could patch together a complete version from all the incomplete ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also happening with RootsWeb Mailing Lists!

Beginning March 2nd, 2020 the Mailing Lists functionality on RootsWeb will be discontinued. Users will no longer be able to send outgoing emails or accept incoming emails. Additionally, administration tools will no longer be available to list administrators and mailing lists will be put into an archival state. Administrators may save the email addresses in their list prior to March 2nd. After that, mailing list archives will remain available and searchable on RootsWeb. As an alternative to RootsWeb Mailing Lists, Ancestry message boards are a great option to network with others in the genealogy community. Message boards are available for free with an Ancestry registered account. Thank you for being part of the RootsWeb family and contributing to this community.

Sincerely, The RootsWeb team

[https://home.rootsweb.com/](https://home.rootsweb.com/)

<comment><USER6> At least they're leaving the archives up and searchable, though I figure they know they'd be subject to the wrath of genealogists if they didn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's also the issue that archives may seemingly be up, but not at all complete.

For example, many of the mid-90s posts about Jim Bell's "Assassination Politics" proposal are missing from public archives of the cypherpunks list. The explanation there seems to be proactive evidence destruction that occurred as news about the ongoing federal investigation spread.

Also, it seems like some old Usenet stuff has disappeared from Google Groups. There's stuff that I archived years ago that's no longer findable.

Anyone else noticed that?

<comment><USER8> >Also, it seems like some old Usenet stuff has disappeared from Google Groups. There's stuff that I archived years ago that's no longer findable.

>Anyone else noticed that?

Yeah, like everyone who even casually uses usenet realized that Google Groups search has been broken for some years now, somewhere in one of the G+ refactors it broke like 60% of the search and nobody at Google seems to care.

Google Groups at this point mostly exists as a frontend for clueless people to stumble on and bump decade old threads that active subscribers often can't even pull. It's honestly worse than the spam problem used to be.

<comment><USER7> Huh. Thanks.

I guess that it's been that many years since I used Usenet.

If stuff is really gone, that would suck. Because I've read that Google has the only comprehensive Usenet archive, acquired with Deja News, supposedly going back to 1982.

<comment><USER8> > If stuff is really gone, that would suck.

It would. Though it's probably not. It's more likely they have their search tuned not to burn extra cycles looking for archived shit not in RAM like the web archive does.

That's my guess at least, there have been HN threads in the past where people run obscure searches and it takes some time for Google to crunch it.

<comment><USER7> Thanks.

So I wonder if there's a workaround to get deeper search.

Maybe I'll dig, and see if I can find how I scraped it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like a lot of hard work has gone into this.

I found myself wondering, more versus future efforts, about the writing already being on the wall for Yahoo Groups years ago (e.g. the multi-day outage in 2017, IIRC). Why wait until the official shutdown notification before getting a scrape of the public groups? As someone who had a modicum of presence still on the site, it had grown increasingly prone to random errors, and I even wondered whether one day it would go down and refuse to come back up no matter how much effort Yahoo put forth attempting to revive it. That could've easily been an even worse "Yahoo-geddon."

(Not that I expect the effort Yahoo would put forth would amount to much, since in the now-defunct Yahoo help forums a Yahoo team member revealed Groups had been "deprioritized" a few years back, i.e. no official support, no help for groups with deceased mods, etc.)

<comment><USER9> > _Why wait until the official shutdown notification before getting a scrape > of the public groups?_

Archive Team does have projects to scrape some sites that are looking like they might not survive the long term (e.g. right now there's a LiveJournal project) but they're all volunteers and I think they just don't have the time to do everything all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Contrary to the title, the post doesn't contain anything specific about the progress of archiving. Like how much of the content is saved and how much isn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Ok, thank you, this is the kind criticism I crave!

I suppose by "vague" you mean there weren't any hard numbers.

Well I kind of linked the archive team tracker but you had to do some clicking to find it, and unfortunately I didn't have a statistic on the SYG's progress at the time of posting. However since posting I do have a rough idea of things:

Archive Team's own Tracker reports 2.76 TB of data to have been saved. The SYG team hasn't fully tallied up their data yet, but have counted the number of groups they've retrieved and/or are retrieving from to be around 123K.

I have since inserted this data into the post and would like to thank you for your brutal honesty :)

<comment><USER10> Thank you for the numbers, and for your much appreciated work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's great to see the community coming together to save the content. I'm glad that they were able to save a considerable amount of the data.

</comment><comment><USER12> That chart was interesting. Interesting how the growth of yahoo groups memberships really dropped off right around 2014.

<comment><USER4> I don't want to say something I can't substantiate, however in 2013 Yahoo rolled out the "Neo" interface to Groups that was vastly unpopular with existing users [0], and many groups chose that point to switch away.

[0] [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/03/yahoo_groups_neo_de...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/03/yahoo_groups_neo_design_upsets_users/)

<comment><USER13> It wasn't just unpopular, it was actually broken - constant javascript and server errors that prevented things from loading.</comment></comment></comment>


Economics: The User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/29/economics-the-users-guide-ha-joon-chang-review <comment><USER2> Chang seems to be conflating two visions of economics: one vision of economics that says how things are, and one vision that says how things should be. There's a lot of overlap, of course, but one is economic theory and one is political theory. In the former, there are well studied areas of economics where we have consensus for cause and effect[0][1][2][3]. To just point to areas of disagreement and say the whole field is bad reminds of those who point to disagreement on abiogenesis and say evolution is wrong. Not to say that agreement indicates correctness, but disagreement doesn't indicate that everyone doing research is wrong.

The article's other problem with economics seems to be that it assumes people are unfeeling, which is a fair criticism but not one that is particularly new. There is a field called Behavioral Economics which tries to address this and is on the radar of pretty much every economist[4].

The problem I think is more that economics never reaches people directly but is filtered through politics. I was reading on Bradford DeLong's blog the story of Mankiw, who is a respected economist but worked for the Bush administration, where he felt he had to be silent about incorrect economic theory but he could influence them in small ways to be better on economics, effectively trading truth and reputation for a small amount of power[5].

[0]: [http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/steel-and-aluminum- tariffs](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/steel-and-aluminum-tariffs)

[1]: [http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/supplemental- nutritional-a...](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/supplemental-nutritional- assistance-program)

[2]: [http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/missing-productivity- growt...](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/missing-productivity-growth)

[3]: [http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/immigration](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/immigration)

[4]: [http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/behavioral- economics-2](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/behavioral-economics-2)

[5]: [http://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/07/hoisted-from- the-2007...](http://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/07/hoisted-from- the-2007-archives-the-incredulity-of-jared-bernstein-and-myself.html)

<comment><USER3> We don't have consensus for cause and effect at all. What we have is a well established groupthink trying desperately to maintain its view and its power. The 2008 crash threw all of it up in the air. I'd recommend reading debunking economics to see the heterodox viewpoint. Essentially there is no value free economics. That a marketing pitch for a set of values. There is only political economy.

<comment><USER4> Economics is an evolving field of study like any other. There are many different schools of thought even within the 'mainstream' position. Using disagreements and changes within the field as an argument that the entire field is flawed is what climate change deniers use when they want to dismiss evidence of climate change. There is room for disagreement on policy without dismissal of the entire field.

Besides, which heterodox viewpoint are you going to argue for? The Marxist? Austrian? Both of these are more clearly 'marketing pitches for a set values' than 'mainstream' economics. If an excessive emphasis on the free market is a pet-peeve of yours then you certainly don't want the latter.

<comment><USER5> it's not an exact science in the same way physics or chemistry were. by the arguments of market fundamentalists/etc you'd think they think economics is a deductive science

part of his whole thing is that economics isn't something too complicated for the average person to understand. too much mathiness and touted as an absolute certain science

>The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.

<comment><USER6> > it's not an exact science in the same way physics or chemistry were

Can you explain the difference between an "exact science" and the other thing?

<comment><USER7> Real science involves experiments and therefore proof of causality.

<comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_economics)

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

Which is a moot point because science is done without controlled experiments all of the time, e.g. astrophysics, epidemiology, sociology. One of the most famous cases in medicine is the connection of drinking water to cholera discovered using observation to connect deaths to a nearby well.

<comment><USER7> Well it's great that they do more than just design experiments and hack p-vales all day;) Geez, had no idea it was such a controversial statement. What do you want to say, every application of math or coding counts as science? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science)

<comment><USER2> Whether something is a "real science" is based on whether or not science is done, not the difficulty of the subject matter. Spending so much time trying to narrowly semanticize science in a way that specifically excludes economics is navel gazing. The purpose of these discussions seems to be to discredit economics and discount it's predictive power by defining it as not-science, but predictive power doesn't come from the definition of the word science, it comes from the statistical methods that science uses.

Does it involve research? Does the research produce models with predictive power? Ok, let's use it, just like every policy maker in the world pre-2016.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please add (2014) to the title.

As for the book - read it a while ago, it's very good. That's coming from someone who actually trained to be an economist before reading it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I read (and liked!) Ha-Joon Chang's book (which was not the first of his I'd read); my only quip is with his physics. In fact, there are a lot of cases in physics where we have to do something similar to his recommendation for economics. Quantum physics, relativity, the electron as particle or wave, Newtonian physics, are all different (and mostly contradictory) models for physics. We pick the one that works best for the problem we're working on. We don't use relativity when we're designing bridges, we don't use quantum physics either, but we need to know about them and know when we do need to use them. His recommendation for economics is not so dissimilar.

<comment><USER9> Ugh. "quibble", not "quip". Sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Put this way. Sophisticated data mining feeding models that forecast the value of your startup or large customer base.....ain't science. No amount of ML icing on the cake is going to make the (economic) forecast more accurate. It's good journalism at best.

</comment><comment><USER10> The book sounds good, but the book and the article are from 2014.

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks like as good of a dumping ground as any for my pet issue. If you're interested in economic schools besides Neo-Classical there is a class on Coursera called _Introduction to Economic Theories._

If you're interested in critiques of contemporary economic thought then I would say Ha-Joon Chang isn't your best option. I think the thing to do is to mostly ditch economists as they aren't that great of critics (aside from a few Post-Keynesians but that's my own personal bias) and look to the philosophers.

Here's a critique by Martha Nussbaum that I find pretty convincing: [https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...](https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5798&context=uclrev)

Michael Sandel has a video series on INET called _What Money Can 't Buy_ based off his book. It's easy to watch and it's basically him prodding at some of the philosophical assumptions made in our usual economic reasoning. I find it quite good and it does have big name economists like Mankiw on it.

Elizabeth Anderson is good as well and she seems to be more than happy to appear on libertarian programs.

Here she is on econtalk: [http://www.econtalk.org/elizabeth-anderson-on- worker-rights-...](http://www.econtalk.org/elizabeth-anderson-on-worker- rights-and-private-government/)

on Libertarianism.org:

1\. [https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts- podcast/e...](https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts- podcast/equality-capabilities-or-equality-outcomes)

2\. [https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts/do- employ...](https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts/do-employers- rules-our-lives)

And with Mike Munger: [http://www.publicsquare.net/2017/11/private-government- how-e...](http://www.publicsquare.net/2017/11/private-government-how- employers-rule-our-lives-and-why-we-dont-talk-about-it/)

There's some sociologists that are also critical of the standard economic reasoning but I don't know enough about that side of the issue to provide any recommendations.

<comment><USER10> Even if we accepted your criticism that economists have a limited ability to pick apart conventional wisdom, I think it is worthwhile to hear these things from people steeped in and deeply knowledgeable about the field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As an economics major, it's very clear to me who in this thread has received an education in economics going beyond the freshman level, and who has not. The giveaway tell is that, much like climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers, the latter focus on questioning the fundamental methodologies and paradigms of this field without the contextual knowledge to understand why they came to be established through overwhelming consensus in the first place. Such idle complaints do not constitute valid criticism or discourse, but only ignorance.

<comment><USER13> Might you give us your own input then? It would be more useful to those who have not received an education in economics going beyond the freshman level, as the others apparently don't need your input.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you used iptables to prevent procrastination? - <AUTHOR>

After reading the comments on today's Disconnecting Distraction essay by PG (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192654), I realized that I wanted to throttle my internet usage, not relegate it to a few times during the day.  That way, I could still spend some time online, but the "Unable to connect" page would set off alarms.  Is there anyone out there who uses iptables to prevent procrastination?
Not having used iptables before, but knowing that I wasn't blocking anything because I'm behind a router firewall, I read the man page and implemented some rules that throttled my hourly connections to 200:

  iptables -A OUTPUT -p ! tcp -j ACCEPT
  iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport ! 80 -j ACCEPT
  iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m limit --limit 400/hour --limit-burst 500 -j ACCEPT
  iptables -A OUTPUT -j REJECT
 Surprisingly, after implementing these commands, I searched on Google and didn't find any mentions of iptables preventing procrastination.  Surely I'm not the only one to have thought of this idea, but it didn't feel right to comment this late on the original article and not help anyone.  It's helped me significantly so far, and even made submitting this question a bit tricky.  So, hopefully these commands help someone else, and if you have better rules, feel free to share... <comment><AUTHOR> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but here's a guess at a Mac OS X version of the commands:

      sudo ipfw add 1 pipe 1 src-port 80
      sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 500Byte/s

</comment><comment><USER2> Or, if you need full access (including web) to the local subnet, but wish to restrict your internet access, just remove your default gateway. I do this regularly with good results.

</comment><comment><USER3> I actually thought about doing this quite a few times, but ran off procastinating instead of reading the man page. Will try, thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you didn't procrastinate this time around...and glad I wasn't the only one to think of it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> just put the sites you waste most of your time on in your hosts file like this:

reddit.com 127.0.0.1

problem solved, forever.

<comment><USER5> I also added this rule but then I started going to anonymouse.org for browsing

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> i hear comcast already provides a free service something like this

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, my router provides access restrictions by day, hour, website, and keyword, but I wanted a throttle for my own computer that wouldn't effect the rest of my family. If you're the only one using the connection, then controls at the router or at Comcast's routers makes sense. Also mentioned on the other thread was Freedom ( <http://www.ibiblio.org/fred/freedom/> ), a Mac-only application that disables access for a specific period of time or until you reboot. However, throttling sounded better to me, and other iptables modules (e.g. time and owner) can match packets for certain users and certain times of the day. I haven't thought it all out yet, I'm seeing what helps the most to improve my efficiency. (RescueTime, feel free to implement this feature :-)

<comment><USER6> i was actually making a joke about how they silently kill some of your traffic for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, fortunately they're still up at port 6881 and have a ways to go to get down to 80 :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Humble Book Bundle: Java by O'Reilly - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/books/java-books <comment><USER2> Since O'Reilly no longer has an online storefront, is this the easiest way to get DRM free O'Reilly ebooks?

<comment><USER3> Ebooks.com has the O'Reilly books DRM free:

[https://www.ebooks.com/searchapp/searchresults.net?page=1&te...](https://www.ebooks.com/searchapp/searchresults.net?page=1&term=PublisherID:36485&publisherName=O%27Reilly+Media)

<comment><USER4> I could be wrong, but it looks like they use their own proprietary DRM and you have to use their reader software if you want to read the books you buy offline -

from [http://about.ebooks.com/about-ebooks- com/](http://about.ebooks.com/about-ebooks-com/) Proprietary DRM We have our own DRM system that has secured the content delivered via our Ebook Reader apps since 2007. It is not based on Adobe ACS. Having our own DRM system improves usability for our customers, and enables us to respond quickly to new requirements and trends.

from [https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en- gb/articles/213789906-Frequ...](https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en- gb/articles/213789906-Frequently-Asked-Questions-FAQs-#q1)

Do I need special software or hardware to read eBooks?

All you need is your PC, laptop or hand held device and the free Reader software. We offer eBooks in three different formats: PDF download, EPUB download and Online Reader. Our Online Reader requires no software other than an internet browser. For downloading, we will provide you with a link to download the appropriate Reader software free of charge when you make a purchase.

<comment><USER3> I haven't purchased anything from them yet but if you select an O'Reilly book it says: "Read online, or download in DRM-free EPUB or DRM-free PDF format."

Also, on this page[1], it says: "Most of the ebooks available to download from eBooks.com (but not all) are protected by Adobe DRM."

Given the above, I would assume that downloads of O'Reilly books would not be encumbered.

[1][https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en- gb/articles/205639205-Insta...](https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en- gb/articles/205639205-Installing-Adobe-Digital-Editions-ADE-on-your-computer)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how many promising newbies we've lost to the massive boilerplates of java?</comment>


How to Make a Country Rich - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9zThcMJzQU <comment><USER2> School of life on Hacker News. are we hitting a new low?</comment>