From Word to Markdown to InDesign: Fully Automated Typesetting Using Pandoc - <AUTHOR> http://rhythmus.be/md2indd/ <comment><USER2> Well, yes, if you dumb your document down to the level of "markdown", it's not hard to grind them out as plain text with some styling. You can write HTML in that style, too. People did that 20 years ago.[1] That was the original vision of HTML.

Some people wanted to stop there, and limit HTML to describing the semantics of a document, not its visual appearance. They lost.[2]

Pandoc doesn't really use "markdown". It uses "enhanced markdown":

 _" Pandoc's enhanced version of Markdown includes syntax for footnotes, tables, flexible ordered lists, definition lists, fenced code blocks, superscripts and subscripts, strikeout, metadata blocks, automatic tables of contents, embedded LaTeX math, citations, and Markdown inside HTML block elements."_

Pandoc's "markdown" now has roughly the feature set of HTML 3.

[1] [http://www.animats.com/papers/articulated/articulated.html](http://www.animats.com/papers/articulated/articulated.html) [2] [http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html](http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html)

<comment><USER3> If you prove that those who thought HTML should be exclusively for semantics and not visual appearance "lost" by linking to a history of HTML that was last updated in 1998 it makes it seem as if you missed HTML5 when great pains have been taken to _remove_ visual styling information from HTML in place of semantic markers.

In fact most of the web developers I speak with regularly agree. The consensus in recent years is that HTML _is_ supposed to be exclusively semantic and markup should be styled with CSS.

[http://www.csszengarden.com/](http://www.csszengarden.com/) is this concept taken to an extreme. Same HTML, same semantics, different styling.

<comment><USER2> The claim was made for HTML5 that it would do that. Some HTML5 page source does look like that, but not most of it.

<comment><USER3> No, there is a specification for HTML5, and it does exactly what I said it does. Granted, most "HTML5" is a mix of HTML 4 and HTML5 (sometimes even a little XHTML) but these are not strict validated sites.

Here, try running a few websites through [https://validator.w3.org/](https://validator.w3.org/) and see what pops up. You'd be surprised.

For example, [https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com) is extremely bad HTML5, and if you look at the report on it, [https://html5.validator.nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinat...](https://html5.validator.nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com&showimagereport=yes&showsource=yes) you can see a bunch of "Use CSS Instead" suggestions. This is the separation of style from semantics that HTML5 was made to reinforce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So 30% of my current job is writing technical user guides for large, custom, automated research systems (the rest is design and development of those systems).

Each one is slightly different, and so needs its own guide. We currently are stuck using Word b/c it's so fast. Yes it's ugly. Yes it's a pain to work with sometimes. But I haven't found anything that's faster to produce these docs with.

The reason we haven't switched to html, latex, or xml etc... is because I haven't found a typesetting program that is as easy to drag and drop images into and out of. Each guide has 30+ images on average. I _need_ that interface to be drag and drop otherwise it's too tedious to write the guide. The formatting of the text I'd love to do in some sort of markup language, but the images have to be dead simple.

Short version: Anyone know of a typsetting solution with some markup language, version control, print to PDF happen at click of a button, and drag and drop images?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly the sort of use case we are focussing on and building our automated typesetting service for.¹ You'll probably also benefit from file inclusions so that you can keep a library of text snippets, with variables, keeping them versioned separately, and which you can then re-use and assemble to form a new, slightly different manual, with the variables automatically populated at typesetting time.

Could you be more specific on the problem you're facing with placing images? Is it that there are like hundreds of them, for which you would want to have created the references (and ![Caption](syntax)) automatically, because typing out the file paths manually is too tedious? That is doable, although it would be more of a drag-and-drop feature to be implemented by a dedicated Markdown editor, or an ST plugin.

Or would you like to have more fine-grained control over floats, sizing and placement of the images relative to their place in the text narrative? For which a WYSIWYG interface is indeed more well suited, re: many document author's gripe with TeX's figure placement.

¹ [http://textus.io/](http://textus.io/)

<comment><USER4> Glad to hear it.

Here's some bullet point thoughts: 1) Workflow needs to be uber-fast and not require saving/naming the images (at least at the user level, the program will of course). Many images are screen shots from SW installs. Workflow goes: Run SW in VM-> screenshot portion of interest -> Copy+Paste into word doc. I never even save the image in that case. The rest of the images are photos of HW. I just want to drag and drop into the document, not rename them all and move them to a same folder with the document. The document/CMS/program should take care of that all for me (like Word does).

2) I do need the text and images to match better and be more WYSIWYG. Location is more important than aesthetics for a guide. It cannot be the abomination that LaTeX is. LaTeX figures are terrible to work with (and that's having published multiple academic papers + PhD thesis in LaTeX). Sizing is less important (that can be [width=x, height=y]).

3) Variables/snippets: Libraries of text snippets and variables is what we do quite a bit of. Right now with a few kludged together macros and custom Word doc properties. Lots of docs go "Run the <SW install name> for <device>" with <> items defined at document level. Sounds like you do this, and it's probably better than how word does :)

sorry for dumping on ya, but I'm excited to find people working in this space. It's something I feel like there should be better tools for but just haven't found yet.

<comment><USER5> You might be interested in Problem Steps Recorder[0]. Word should be able to import the resulting mhtml file.

[0] [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/patricka/archive/2010/01/04/using- th...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/patricka/archive/2010/01/04/using-the-secret- windows-7-problem-step-recorder-to-create-step-by-step-screenshot- documents.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is Markdown really "relatively new?" According to Wikipedia, it's older than OOXML, aka .docx .xlsx .pptx etc.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Relative to widespread brand recognition, I guess, and relative to similar initiatives. But indeed, Markdown — as in, the concept of _lightweight markup_ — predates the Web and is at least as old as Usenet. I footnote 9, I linked to my Github repo with Markdown resources; there you'll find the following chronology:

\- Setext (Ian Feldman, 1992) \- AFT (Todd Coram, 1999) \- Grutatxt (Ángel Ortega, 2000) \- atx (Aaron Swartz, 2002) \- AsciiDoc (Stuart Rackham, 2002) \- MediaWiki (Magnus Manske & Lee Daniel Crocker, 2002) \- reStructuredText (David Goodger, 2002) \- Org-mode (Carsten Dominik, 2003) \- Textile (Dean Allen, 2004) \- Markdown (John Gruber & Aaron Swartz, 2004)

<comment><USER3> Yes, I'm quite aware of the history, which is why I thought it was strange that you referred to it as "relatively new." Otherwise, it's a great post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! And yeah, if people would only know their history… Relatively new, to me, unfortunately, means that lightweight markup still is not something which the broader public is familiar with, not even by its proxy brandname "Markdown", even with big outlets (e.g. Reddit) pushing it forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the perspective of someone with experience working in the print industry: This is impressive work, and you nail down the biggest issue with Word—if you don't use pure style sheets, you get cruddy code. (Google Docs has this problem, too.)

I think that lots of folks are trying to find different ways to solve this problem in the print world, especially as stories have to be pulled into CMSes as well.

Personally, I'd be curious if it'd be possible to cull copy from a InDesign file to convert into Markdown, complete with links to images used in the document that could then be edited.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's great to see others in the publishing world moving away from proprietary software like Word and towards plain-text based processes. As the author points out there are many benefits of this.

Here's something to consider: you've ditched MS Word, maybe you can ditch InDesign too? In my experience once content goes into an Adobe program, it's hard to get it out again in a clean way. It's pretty impressive what you can accomplish using CSS3 for print layout[1].

I work at an academic publisher, and I've spent much of the last year preaching the benefits of a similar workflow. Some of the editors are now editing manuscripts in Markdown files directly. Currently we're building a system where a single set of text files get fed into a program like a static website generator. This produces a web version, but also PDF, ePUB, etc. automatically. We're getting pretty close[2]. I think this is the future for many forms of publishing.

I think one of the big remaining pieces of the puzzle is creating a better Markdown editor, something suited for the needs of scholars & academics with support for things like footnotes, bibliographies, etc, while remaining a plain-text format.

[1] [http://alistapart.com/article/building-books-with- css3](http://alistapart.com/article/building-books-with-css3) [2] [http://egardner.github.io/posts/2015/building-books-with- mid...](http://egardner.github.io/posts/2015/building-books-with-middleman/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Unlinked footnotes in a webpage?

With all that unused margin space on a desktop, it seems like they would have made more sense as Tufte-style marginal notes anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Though they are linked, see e.g. [http://rhythmus.be/md2indd/#fn2](http://rhythmus.be/md2indd/#fn2) — it's Pandoc after all, which creates those ;-)

The wide margins are due to typography best practices, which dictates between ~50 and 70 characters on a line. One could of course blow up font-size, as is in fashion, since Medium. But then there are too few lines above the fold.

But you're entirely correct as regards marginal notes. Unfortunately, they're not trivially implemented, since you'd need to swap end-notes to side-notes relative to the viewport, cq. media query breakpoint, but while that involves DOM manipulation, it cannot be done with CSS alone. Let alone dealing with collision detection for stacking longer footnotes vertically…

<comment><USER9> I implemented this in my online book[1] and it wasn't too bad. Try resizing the window to see.

The entirety of the JS (not including jQuery) is:

        $(document).ready(function() {
          $(window).resize(refreshAsides);

          // Since we may not have the height correct for the images, adjust the asides
          // too when an image is loaded.
          $('img').load(function() {
            refreshAsides();
          });

          // On the off chance the browser supports the new font loader API, use it.
          if (document.fontloader) {
            document.fontloader.notifyWhenFontsReady(function() {
              refreshAsides();
            });
          }

          // Lame. Just do another refresh after a second when the font is *probably*
          // loaded to hack around the fact that the metrics changed a bit.
          window.setTimeout(refreshAsides, 200);

          refreshAsides();
        });

        function refreshAsides() {
          // Don't position them if they're inline.
          if ($(document).width() < 800) return;

          // Vertically position the asides next to the span they annotate.
          $("aside").each(function() {
            var aside = $(this);

            // Find the span the aside should be anchored next to.
            var name = aside.attr("name");
            var span = $("span[name='" + name + "']");
            if (span == null) {
              window.console.log("Could not find span for '" + name + "'");
              return;
            }

            aside.offset({top: span.position().top - 3});
          });
        }

In my book, the asides are positioned very precisely next to certain lines. If you don't need that level of precision, a pure CSS solution is possible, I think.

Overlapping footnotes could be a problem, but to me that's a case where trying to completely separate design from content is a bad idea. Design should optimize for the actual prose you have and not all possible copy you might write. Likewise, it's often worth tweaking copy a bit to make it look better with your design.

In a couple of cases with my book, I tweaked or rearranged asides to avoid them overlapping.

[1]: [http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/introduction.html](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/introduction.html)

<comment><USER10> Nice book, what did you use to create the HTML from the Markdown? Or did you do some CSS fiddling?

<comment><USER9> A very simple cobbled together Python script:

[https://github.com/munificent/game-programming- patterns/blob...](https://github.com/munificent/game-programming- patterns/blob/master/script/format.py)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> @rhytmvs Have you considered using SILE [1][2] instead of LaTeX (and maybe even InDesign)? (I'm not affiliated, but I believe it may become a worthy successor to TeX in future.)

[1]: [http://video.fosdem.org/2015/main_track- typesetting/introduc...](http://video.fosdem.org/2015/main_track- typesetting/introducing_sile__CAM_ONLY.mp4)

[2]: [https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/introducing_s...](https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/introducing_sile/attachments/slides/772/export/events/attachments/introducing_sile/slides/772/sile.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> Will it work with equations? A major peeve of mine is trying to get Tex to deal with figures in a better manner, especially in space-limited situations (e.g. grant proposals), and I used to use InDesign for that before my work got too mathy.

<comment><USER13> Try ConTeXt. The float placement is much more flexible than in LaTeX. Being built on top of TeX, it supports all the math

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been looking into the same problem for a while, and came to exact same solution a few weeks ago, coincidently. I haven't actually got round to completing all the code for it, but have tested each section. I was delighted when I spotted your article this morning, but was hoping you would have also shared your code... No git repository? I'm sure I can make the whole system myself, but I'm always happy to use others work if it exists. If you do have a working version of this process, please do share it!

</comment><comment><USER15> I prefer asciidoc: [http://powerman.name/doc/asciidoc](http://powerman.name/doc/asciidoc) [http://asciidoctor.org/docs/what-is- asciidoc/](http://asciidoctor.org/docs/what-is-asciidoc/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm really looking forward to the evolution of Markdown, but it will not be a complete replacement for TeX (for many years). TeX is designed around a powerful (macro based) programming system. This is an excerpt from a comment that I posted on HN a while back that is apropos this discussion:

TeX's macro style of programming is too difficult. Nevertheless, people have done amazing things with it.

TeX has somewhere around 325 primatives, and one of the most important is the \def primative used to define macros. These primatives are used to define additional macros, hundreds of them, available in different so called formats. A basic format known as Plain TeX includes about 600 macros in addition to the 325 primatives. LaTeX is another format, the most widely used, but there are others, like ConTeXt, that are also very capable. Each of these extend TeX's primatives with their own macros resulting in different kinds of markup language. TeX's primatives are focused on the low level aspects of typesetting (font sizes, text positions, alignment, etc.). LaTeX provides a markup language that is focused on the logical description of the document's components: headings, chapters, itemized lists, and so forth. The result is a system that does simple things easily while allowing very complex typesetting to be performed when needed.

In addition to the TeX core primatives and the hundreds of commands (implemented as macros) in a format like LaTeX there are additional packages, classes, and styles that are used to provide support for any conceivable document. LaTeX has a rich ecosystem of packages. Typesetting chess? There's a LaTeX package for that. Complex diagrams and graphics, there's a LaTeX package for that. Writing a paper in the style of Tufte? Writing a book? or a musical score? or building a barcode? there are packages for that. The _documentation_ for the Tikz & PGF graphics package is over 1100 pages long! The documentation for the Memoir package is 570 pages.

The amazing thing is that all of this is built out of macros. Diving into this, and once one needs to customize the look of a document it's inevitable, you find yourself in a maze of twisty little passages. Once upon a time, while writing assembly language for large computers, I enjoyed writing fancy assembler macros. I was facinated with Calvin Moore's Trac programming language based on macros and Christopher Strachey's General Purpose Macrogenerator. These were early (mid 1960's) explorations into the viability of macro processors as means for expressing arbitrary computations. Reader's interested in trying out macros for programming can try the m4 programming language (by Kernighan and Ritchie) found on Unix and Linux systems. m4 is used in autoconf and sendmail config files. Yet, TeX macros are in a whole other dimension. All of these powerful macro systems have one thing in common: parameterized macros can be expanded into text that is then rescanned looking for newly formed macros calls (or new macro definitions) to expand as many times as one wants. This isn't just an occasional leaky abstraction; it is programming by way of leaky abstractions. Looking at TeX packages is some of the most difficult programming that I've done. It's unbelievably impressive what people have come up with (e.g. floating point implemented via macro expansion in about 600 lines of TeX), but it's also unbelievably frustrating to program in such an environment. The LaTeX3 project is an attempt to rewrite LaTeX (still running on top of the TeX core). Started in the early 1990's it is still not done. I think its just that they are mired in a swamp of macros. They do have a relatively stable set of macros written, with the catchy name expl3, that are intended for use when writing LaTeX3. Here's a sample

         \cs_gset_eq:cc
        { \cf@encoding \token_to_str:N  #1 } { ? \token_to_str:N #1 }

This is described in the documentation as being a big improvement over the old macros and "far more readable and more likely to be correct first time". I can't wait.

I think LaTeX is absolutely without peer, but I wish improving it's programming method wasn't so daunting. I keep toying with starting a project to do just that, but so many others have tried and failed. It's disheartening.

Links:

[TRAC] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAC_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAC_\(programming_language\))

[GPM] [http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/3/225.full.pdf](http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/3/225.full.pdf)

[m4] info pages available on Unix and Linux

[Tikz & PGF] [https://www.ctan.org/pkg/pgf?lang=en](https://www.ctan.org/pkg/pgf?lang=en)

[Memoir] [https://www.ctan.org/pkg/memoir?lang=en](https://www.ctan.org/pkg/memoir?lang=en)

[expl3] [https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb30-1/tb94wright- latex3.pdf](https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb30-1/tb94wright-latex3.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Did you maybe have a look at SILE [1][2]? (I'm not affiliated, but it got me interested very much and I believe it may become a worthy successor to TeX in future.)

[1]: [http://video.fosdem.org/2015/main_track- typesetting/introduc...](http://video.fosdem.org/2015/main_track- typesetting/introducing_sile__CAM_ONLY.mp4)

[2]: [https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/introducing_s...](https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/introducing_sile/attachments/slides/772/export/events/attachments/introducing_sile/slides/772/sile.pdf)

<comment><USER16> Thank you. I'm definitely going to look into it.</comment></comment></comment>


2003 Request of Afghanistan for Redelegation of the .af Top-Level Domain - <AUTHOR> https://www.iana.org/reports/2003/af-report-08jan2003.html <comment><USER2> Off topic, but I spent a bunch of time on this domain recently as we used AF as an internal code for Africa and whoever set it up assumed we'd never have customers from Afghanistan. An assumption that was correct for 5 years :D

<comment><USER3> You (edit: They) do know that Africa isn't a country, right? Because I'm struggling to think of a company form that has a field for 'continent'.

There are also international standards for country codes. Using standards almost always saves work down the road, and sometimes much more.

<comment><USER4> There is the eu for Europe so I think it's reasonable to think Africa being a possibility.

<comment><USER5> Yup that's .africa for "the African and Pan African communities and users" and the African Union. Technically .eu is for the European Union, not the continent of Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope people don't end up using this for AF (as f __*) e.g. www.lit.af

<comment><USER7> This was what I initially thought of as well. I figured that Christmas Islands made some money from the .cx TLD (from abcdse.cx type domains, a la the infamous goatse.cx)?

My less mature side could imagine something like idg.af selling for quite a bit.

<comment><USER8> If you'd like to make an offer shoot me an email :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tried registering a .af domain around ten years ago. At the time the Afghan NIC registration process involved downloading a PDF application, manually filling out your WHOIS info and nameservers, then emailing it to them. Registration fees were paid via a wire transfer to their NY bank account. Actually it turns out this is still the process [1]

Eventually though I found a registrar that supports .af domains and I was able to secure mine :^)

[1] [http://nic.af/en/page/what-we-do/afgnic/af- registration](http://nic.af/en/page/what-we-do/afgnic/af-registration)</comment>


Github may block content if they receive a valid request from Roskomnadzor - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/github/roskomnadzor <comment><USER2> I would really like to see GitHub ignoring such idiotic requests. As Russian citizen, I'd rather pay for VPN to ensure global freedom of speech, than see how our governments test boundaries of lawful and sensible censorship.

<comment><USER3> >I'd rather pay for VPN to ensure global freedom of speech,

You using a VPN wont change russian laws.That's the issue.

I'm french and piratebay is on its way to be blocked at the ISP level here. Me getting a VPN will not change the fact that this shouldnt happen and that french people need to do something to change these insane laws.

Granted its tougher to go against russian politicians and lawmakers that french ones. But you're not getting more freedom of speech and information with a VPN,neither do I.

I've been in Russia numerous times , and frankly I have hard time understanding what's going on there today. I think Putin genuinely thinks that without him Russia is doomed or something,which is a mistake.Russia can only survive if its politicians have faith in Russia's institutions, It's not about this or that guy,or it's just another dictatorship.

<comment><USER4> Stealing intellectual property is entirely different from censorship, and I'm disappointed to see these two things being lumped together here.

<comment><USER5> > Stealing intellectual property is entirely different from censorship, and > I'm disappointed to see these two things being lumped together here.

The Pirate Bay is entirely different from stealing intellectual property, and I'm disappointed to see these two things being lumped together here.

Also, I'd be careful throwing the word "censorship" around. What Roskomnadzor is doing here isn't terribly different from DMCA takedown notices or governments "censoring" documented child abuse.

<comment><USER6> >>The Pirate Bay is entirely different from stealing intellectual property

As someone who has their intellectual property shared by The Pirate Bay I disagree.

<comment><USER7> People being stabbed in dark alleys is not a good argument for banning knives.

<comment><USER8> However this is how some current regulation are enacted or confirmed: The Kinder Egg is still not legal to import or to possess in US to the best of my knowledge (see [http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_107.html](http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_107.html))

<comment><USER9> That doesn't make it right. There have been something like 6 Kinder egg related deaths in the last 20 years [1], versus 1.5 BILLION of them sold every year [2]. Meanwhile, thousands of people die each year from choking on normal food that doesn't contain plastic objects.

[1] [http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/15909](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/15909)

[2] [http://kinderbrands.com.au/company/](http://kinderbrands.com.au/company/)

<comment><USER8> I am not arguing this is right. I am just pointing out this is entirely possible. In fact I would tend to agree with you. Tobacco is a proven bad drug, and it hasn't been made illegal. There are obviously other parameters to take into account but still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Let me clarify a bit, I'm a former employee of russian telecom operator.

Almost everyone can file a complaint. Roskomnadzor's experts decide if it's valid (no court order is needed) then sends notice, and a site's owner has 3 days to comply.

Telecom operator doesn't have to block entire site, only the offending content. But, as you know it's not always possible due to, you know, https or absence of DPI hardware.

And almost all, I think, who filed complaints, tried to show the absurdity of the situation.

It's the essence of situation in Russia, government tries to do some "good", but even then it does it mostly horribly wrong. Incompetence is everywhere empowered by the fact that those incompetent people are here to stay.

</comment><comment><USER11> tl;dr: Russian law enforcement required GitHub to block certain content in Russia. GitHub has complied and put up a list of the blocked URLs in this repo.

From a short look at the linked/blocked documents, all of them are suicide instructions written in Russian.

<comment><USER12> That actually doesn't seem unreasonable to prohibit...

<comment><USER11> I am not so sure about it. Blocking/prohibiting information will only lead to increased interest, and it will never be possible to block all instances of that information.

A far superior approach would be better social care for people who might commit suicide, but that would cost money and effort, as opposed to a symbolic act of prohibition.

Besides, Internet filters always start with the really evil things, like suicide instructions or child pornography, and once established they are slowly expanded to cover terrorism, homosexual pornography, regular pornography, copyright infringement and finally political opposition. You really do not want to go down that slippery slope.

One example of this is the UK porn filter which is now also used to block jihad propaganda: [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/14/uk-isps- to...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/14/uk-isps-to-introduce- jihadi-and-terror-content-reporting-button)

<comment><USER13> > One example of this is the UK porn filter which is now also used to block > jihad propaganda

The article does not support your claim.

EDIT: To clarify, as per the reply I gave further down: There is no country wide "UK porn filter". There are voluntary filters put in place by each of the largest providers that are wildly inconsistent in what they block, and wildly ineffective.

Most of the filtering is also opt-in or opt-out for most of these providers, mostly apart from blocks targeting child porn.

Outside of the top 5-6 providers, many smaller providers don't filter at all.

<comment><USER14> _They have also agreed to ensure that terrorist and extremist material is captured by their filters to prevent children and young people coming across radicalising material._

<comment><USER13> The point being there is no single government mandated "UK porn filter". Each of the biggest ISPs have individual filters. Many of the smaller ISPs don't have filters.

EDIT: Maybe whoever downvoted might care to explain why? The comment is factual. There is no legally mandated filtering across the board in the UK. The only legally mandated filtering is a small set of specific court orders targeting a group of the largest ISPs, requiring them to filter specific sites (Pirate Bay being the main target).

<comment><USER11> The point made originally was that Internet filtering is bad for society. The fact that there is not a single mandated filter but a set of different(?) filters at the major ISPs, which do not even have a legal basis, is just making the situation worse for end users. While I admit that my original wording was misleading, I can not see how the enacted back-and-forth contributes to the discussion.

From the media coverage of the "UK porn filter" that I followed, the government said they would make a law to require filtering, then the ISPs jumped on it and implemented their filtering systems, and then the proposed laws failed / stalled.

I do not know enough about the UK ISP landscape to be able to determine if all users of the major ISPs can switch to a non-filtering one, and at what additional expense.

<comment><USER13> > From the media coverage of the "UK porn filter" that I followed, the > government said they would make a law to require filtering, then the ISPs > jumped on it and implemented their filtering systems, and then the proposed > laws failed / stalled.

That's not quite how it went. The government hinted that it might do so _unless_ the ISPs implemented filters that people had to ask to opt-out of.

The ISPs jumped on adding a filtering choice for users in the form of a checkbox when they sign on. Something many of them had before. Some providers - notably the mobile providers - have defaulted to opt-out (since long before the government interference, on the basis that e.g. pay as you go sims can easily be obtained without providing id, and as a result they don't know if their subscribers are over 18), while most regular ISPs default to opt-in.

The government subsequently then did _not_ propose any law, and issued triumphant press releases about protecting children, after Camerons advisers had been pleading with ISPs to at least make the checkboxes default to ticked. Largely the result was that they got mocked for not actually achieving any changes that made a difference to anything at all.

All the largest ISPs still filters child porn regardless of subscriber choice, but that's the only thing you're not able to turn off. Even that filtering is not covering nearly all ISPs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is odd. How come when russia requests a block it only gets blocked for russians, but when america requests a block (DMCA) it gets blocked for everyone worldwide?

<comment><USER16> Odd? Image you're a Github. There are thousands of paying accounts in Russia and also a zillion Russians contributing to open-source projects.

Now imagine all these people now have no access and start sending emails asking why their paid accounts now aren't working? Russian devs working on tight schedule, forereigners working in Russia, subs doing contracts for american companies - now all of them are DENIED.

Would it really be better for github to continue blocking all those innocent people because of a clearly a set-up type suicide-notes post?

<comment><USER15> That wasn't my point at all. What I meant: I, as an European, notice content is blocked for me every time America requests a block on GitHub. Now I hear about Russia request a block on content, and it seems that only Russians are blocked but I am not. This caused me to wonder why America got to decide what everyone in the world can access, yet Russia only gets to decide for their own country.

The other replies to my comment probably got it right, with GitHub being based in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is where I really don't understand the concept of trying to force your law/will/idea(ls) on other people.

-Today I posted an image of an apple on my web-page.

-The city in the next town over has decided that images of apples are bad/wrong/evil and has passed a law banning the display of apples.

-The city that I live in gets an angry letter from the other city upset about the portrayal of apples and the wanton disregard for their laws.

Why oh why can't we live in a world where the concept of "If this material is illegal in your country, you shouldn't be looking at it." or "Be aware of laws that pertain to you and respect them or change them if you disagree."

<comment><USER18> > This is where I really don't understand the concept of trying to force your > law/will/idea(ls) on other people.

You should have wrote: "on other people that live under the same legal jurisdiction".

Your attitude towards the law is a real problematic attitude that is currently more common in this 'generation' (generation not referring exactly to people of a certain age, but more as people living in a certain time). Since we have internet now and there are many movements that promote 'freedom' in all of their possible interpretations, many people find it easy to go over the top and start demanding things like "Be aware of laws that pertain to you and respect them _or change them if you disagree_".

You guys should take time to understand what law is and why is it good for it to exist, and also, why you should respect the jurisdiction pertaining to other regions or other people (EVEN IF YOU DISAGREE WITH IT). If the majority of citizens in this world understood this really simple civical principle, most of the current problems with the world would be nonexistant.

<comment><USER19> > why you should respect the jurisdiction pertaining to other regions

Some of us highly value open debate and discussion. Perhaps because it's a core value in some cultures around the world, but maybe that's overly romantic. I suspect many of us have just read Milton's Areopagitica [1] or Mill [2], and have yet to hear any convincing refutations.[3]

So those of us who recognize the value of open sharing of ideas will chafe at any suggestion that ideas are best refuted with suppression.

Others in the world don't share these views.

So we're left with a dilemma that cannot be resolved through mutual respect. You can't both openly debate controversial topics and be silent about them. There's no middle ground. There's no "respecting others beliefs" on this. These are strictly incompatible views on the world, on what information I'm allowed to discuss with my neighbor.

I don't believe any government should have the power of thought control, so I reject the attempt of (especially foreign governments) telling me what I can or cannot discuss with their citizens. I respect the people around the world, but I cannot always respect their laws.

[1] [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/608](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/608) [2] [http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/58569584868/john- stua...](http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/58569584868/john-stuart-mills- brief-for-freedom-of-speech) [3] Unsurprisingly. How could anyone seriously argue against open discussion and debate while discussing and debating the ideas involved? It's inherently contradictory. Or, those in favor of suppressing speech should first lead by example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _> "Although, we may not always agree with the choices the Russian government has made, we respect the country's sovereignty and recognize that Russians may have different cultural sensitivities"_

GitHub has a right to do whatever they want with their product; I don't really care. But this sort of double speak is infuriating. Calling "cultural sensitivities" the expressions of an authoritatian government that systematically persecutes its citizens is a major "fuck you" to all Russians.

<comment><USER21> The issue here are the suicide instructions written in Russian language so it definitely is about "cultural sensitivities" and not about persecution of civilians by an authoritarian government.

Just because it is okay in your or my culture to distribute such content doesn't mean it is everywhere else - nor that it should be as long as laws reflect the will of the people.

Even in US there are topics that will get you into real trouble, not just your page censored. For example: Try creating a blog where you instruct your readers on how to build an explosive belt or bombs. Maybe combine it with religious fundamentalist rhetoric. You'd probably even end up in jail for that.

<comment><USER22> Would there be consequences for merely providing information?

[http://www.amazon.com/Improvised-Munitions-Handbook- Departme...](http://www.amazon.com/Improvised-Munitions-Handbook-Department- Army/dp/1619493969)

<comment><USER21> It's always a matter of the type of content you distribute and the reach you have.

Take for example Anwar al-Awlaki. He was a US citizen and his content was extremist religious views that he distributed via Internet. Without a trial or conviction he was killed by a drone strike for that, as was his 16 year old son in a second drone strike.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al- Awlaki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is really fun (or stupid), those "suicide guides" were deliberately created for trolling roskompozor.

</comment><comment><USER24> I can view it[1] so it's blocked for Russian users only, yes?

[1] [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stevebest/suicide/master/s...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stevebest/suicide/master/suicide.md)

<comment><USER25> Looks like

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> All these suicide manuals -- trolling. Someone trolled github by submitting suicidal texts in order to get it blocked, because morons from roskomnadzor will block such sites immediately without judgement and investigation.

<comment><USER27> Which makes this law much more stupid.

You can virtually block ANY website in Russia by posting prohibited text or picture (as guest user, for example).

Also, note that NO court decision required. Sites blocked imemdiately (almost).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm Russian and I don't support it at all. Github is losing its face

<comment><USER29> I was under impression you don't work from Russia most of the time these days. Pardon me if I'm wrong.

I'd rather have no problems accessing Github without VPN than worry about Github saving its face in this situation.

<comment><USER28> I don't work from Russia and I want Github to be blocked in Russia.

<comment><USER29> How would that be helpful to anyone?

<comment><USER28> Russia is doomed to fail and I want it to happen as soon as possible, to have a probably better country

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If I were to put my tinfoil hat on, these repos sure look like an attempt to force the Russian supervisory agency into issuing takedown notices and prompting friction with GitHub. There are a lot of stupid laws and I'd say GH found a very simple and unbtrusive way of dealing with one of them.

<comment><USER31> Forcing? Weren't they already sending takedown notices?

Besides, this is how GH deals with all its requests (e.g. DMCA: [https://github.com/github/dmca](https://github.com/github/dmca)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Thanks GitHub. I can turn off FrootVPN now.

<comment><USER33> Blocking any website is foolishy. Every sansible user knows about VPN. I use [https://privatoria.net/](https://privatoria.net/) and have no problems. Moreover VPN helps me in developing, as i need static IP to get access to different services from different places like office, home or cafe.

<comment><USER32> Those whom the government wants to protect luckily don't know about VPN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Reminds me of thepiratebay legal threats section: [http://thepiratebay.se/legal](http://thepiratebay.se/legal)

<comment><AUTHOR> If only! But international free speech is a non-issue...

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> @Mods: Please change the title as it has a typo, the Russian entity referred to is spelled "Roskomnadzor", not "Roskompazor"

<comment><USER11> This looks like a pun by the submitter, exchanging "надзор" (supervision/monitoring) with "позор" (shame).

<comment><AUTHOR> Can confirm, source: i am the OP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Do you think it occurs to the average russian citizen that their country resembles Germany in the 1930's?

</comment><comment><USER37> So let me get this right: Github, an american company, bows down to threads by a russian company, about russian law, to censor american peoples access?

How the hell is this not a much bigger story?

<comment><USER38> Censor Russian people's access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Note that as opposed to repositories infringing copyright (those they get DMCA takedown notices for), the repository itself is not blocked, at least from the UK.

</comment><comment><USER40> Fuck Github for complying with those requests. This is censorship, they don't have to bend over to accomodate it.

</comment><comment><USER41> I like their attitude. They are complying with Russian government's requests while creating Streisand effect.

</comment><comment><USER42> We have distributed version control system, now looks like it's time to build decentralised package manager.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder if it's legal for Russia to block LGBT topics. I presume GitHub will censor that too.

</comment><comment><USER44> So how long until it's blocked again because of one of the 100 or so forks?

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminds of:

[http://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets- denia...](http://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets-denial-of- site-access-for-certain-persons-in-accordance-with-us-law/)

[http://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets- denia...](http://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets-denial-of- site-access-for-certain-persons-in-accordance-with-us-law/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Hehe, works again here! (was in and out for me)

</comment><comment><USER45> So Github banned Brendan Eich who was so mild in his beliefs they were unknown for years after he contributed to a principled cause. However, they welcome the Russian Federation, which has thrown thousands of people into gulags, taken over media outlets, and has rolled over US allies with impunity.

<comment><USER46> > Github banned Brendan Eich

What in the world are you talking about? A google search shows nothing, but this. [https://github.com/BrendanEich](https://github.com/BrendanEich)

<comment><USER45> I was totally wrong. See above.</comment></comment></comment>


The Big Data Brain Drain - barry-cotter https://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2013/10/26/big-data-brain-drain/ <comment><AUTHOR> > Those with the skills mentioned in this article could easily ask for several > times that compensation in a first-year industry job, and would find > themselves working on interesting problems in a setting where their > computational skills are utilized and valued.

I have to admit that this one always baffled me from the reverse perspective. I always hear these discussions of the great talent shortage and how desperate people are for software engineers. I hear tales of people taking six week crash courses on coding and getting well paying industry jobs. But I just can't believe them.

I don't consider myself a great coder, but I'll forgo humility for a moment to say that I'm decent. Over the course of my PhD, I needed to:

* Write cluster based numeric code for the university supercomputer

* Reverse engineer an undocumented binary network protocol with a packet sniffer

* Work in six languages in a single day (C, Tcl, Labtalk, Scheme, Labview, Python)

* Write code so low level that I had to debug it with an oscilloscope

* Design and implement a data acquisition system that accepted concurrent input from hardware, network, and and user sources

* Port a Monte-Carlo simulation to the GPU

* Write user facing visualization systems

I guess that what I'm trying to say is that I can easily FizzBuzz.

After my PhD, I looked into going into industry, but I couldn't even get a no- thank-you. People complain about dealing with recruiters bugging them about job possibilities, but I couldn't even get one to take my CV. I relocated across an ocean to an employer who didn't even pay for said relocation partially because they're the only people who even got back to me.

Don't get me wrong - I love my current position, but I've known plenty of academics who were miserable. Individuals who were more skilled than myself and sometimes only making as much as Zappos pays their warehouse staff.

If the talent shortage is that bad, why aren't more of these people being poached? Why aren't we seeing a larger brain drain?

<comment><USER2> All I have is anecdotes, but I'll hazard some guesses.

The talent shortage has a strong geographic component. In SV or NYC, job search sites (a poor way to gauge actual demand, but whatever) seem to list 1,000s of available Java/C# gigs, with substantial numbers of listing that include javascript. But I would probably lump those three languages together as placeholder flags to indicate "standard enterprise developer" jobs. Most of these job listing seem to fall on the entry-level, with a steep fall-off in mid-level offerings, and a few (mythical?) mega-$$ listings. These types of jobs feel more "credential sensitive" to me - if your resume (not CV) doesn't say Comp Sci or maybe MIS, you probably get binned immediately.

Leave those regions, job listings seem to drop. If we can trust these listings to reflect some level of region-comparable demand, we might guess that in Seattle, WA or Chicago, IL, there is about 1/2 the demand of SV and NYC. Cut it down even more in places like Austin, TX or RTP, NC, maybe 1/6 or 1/8 the demand of SV and NYC? I'm sure we could include a bunch of other cities in those tiers, but maybe those are loosely representative.

I often wonder how much job demand looks inflated on these job boards though. A quick glance at Java in NYC, NY on indeed.com shows a few big staffing companies with hundreds of listings. I usually assume there are bunch of duplicate listings from staffing companies for a single position.

I think a lot of lower-level gigs out there are filled by kind-of-passable candidates not making anything like the SV salary numbers that get thrown out on HN frequently. Among strong engineers I personally know in my region, several are frequently contacted by recruiters for jobs that are, at best, side-ways moves for them (eg doing the same gig at some different place for roughly the same money). A PhD (and maybe even a MS) _might_ scare employers at this level?

The other part of this, especially regarding the original article, is that deep, strong statistical/machine learning/magic fairy dust hacking gigs are much less numerous that the standard enterprise dev jobs and that those gigs are even more restrictive in recruiting nature.

Meaning, if you are really recruiting for a top-notch "data science" person, you are probably(?) looking for intensive credentials or portfolios. So MS or PhD in Applied Math or Statistics with easily demonstrated programming skills or a set of completed projects cast in the "data science" space. And if you're not recruiting at that level, the "data science" label means "query some data sources to generate a tabular report, maybe with some rollups."

<comment><USER3> A recruiter here in Chicago tells me he's dying for entry level ASP.NET and back-end Java coders. I think a lot of these companies just run these guys through at largely unimpressive wages, run a bunch of candidte through as temp to perm, and hope to god one guy out of 20 isn't a complete moron. I've had the displeasure of working with some of these guys. They have some paper certs and some basic understanding of what they're doing but they have zero big picture and any love of what they are doing. Don't get me started on their work from a security or stability perspective. These guys are just in the wrong field. They heard the siren's song of being a coder, did some coding bootcamp or took a community college class or two, and are shoved into big departments churning out junk code.

I think these jobs echo how a lot of basic IT support staff in the late 90s and early 2000s got work. Companies were scrambling for someone to sit down with end users and explain how Outlook worked, install software, and maybe reboot the occasional server. These guys all ran to braindump sites, got a MCSE or CCNA, and now are lifers at the company they fooled into hiring them.

There's something somewhat sad about all this. These people probably would have been better off in a different field but are now stuck in unpromotable positions because they just don't have what it takes to move up. Our own support guy is in his 40s and is barely competent at providing basic level 1 PC desktop support. He's totally in the wrong field. I'm not saying this stuff is a calling, but in some ways it is. Like a lot of technical jobs, you kinda have to make it your religion and invest a bit of your personal time into it because its so fast moving that if you treat it like a 9-5 desk job, you'll fall behind very quickly.

<comment><USER4> > I think a lot of these companies just run these guys through at largely > unimpressive wages,

This.

When I graduated with a MS in CS 3 years ago, I interviewed at over a dozen companies. I got offers at all of them. The highest offer I got was for 45k. The lowest was 32k. Outside of SV and NYC and the big tech hubs, wages are terrible. For comparison, waiters at the restaurant I worked at (by no means high end) made up to 40k.

Companies want to pay dirt-cheap wages and get tons of highly qualified applicants and _shockingly_ they just can't find anyone!

That said, three years in and my salary has almost doubled (after job-hopping - which did make me sad, as that first job was a lot of fun even if it was a lot of work), so at least there's that, but that's just about the cap for private sector work in the region.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> A more recent article addressing this essay from the same author:

[https://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/08/22/hacking- academia/](https://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/08/22/hacking-academia/)

The tl;dr summary from this second article referencing the first:

      a quick summary is this: scientific research in many
      disciplines is becoming more and more dependent on the
      careful analysis of large datasets. This analysis requires
      a skill-set as broad as it is deep: scientists must be
      experts not only in their own domain, but in statistics,
      computing, algorithm building, and software design as
      well. Many researchers are working hard to attain these
      skills; the problem is that academia's reward structure is
      not well-poised to reward the value of this type of work.
      In short, time spent developing high-quality reusable
      software tools translates to less time writing and
      publishing, which under the current system translates to
      little hope for academic career advancement.

I think the HN title is somewhat misleading, the central thesis from the original article is stated as:

      the skills required to be a successful scientific
      researcher are increasingly indistinguishable from the
      skills required to be successful in industry

This is probably a stunningly awesome outcome - it means that industry has a place for advanced degree holders who will not find a classic academic position. In the linked essay above, from the same author:

      the number of PhDs granted each year far exceeds the
      number of academic positions available, so it is simply
      impossible for every graduate to remain in academia.

I wish people would not use 'big data' as a label in these discussions. I think the essential truth is that being able to apply a scientific, quantitative thought process to problems combined with the ability to write software to provide others with solutions to those problems is valuable across academia and industry. That doesn't really have much to do with the 'big data' meme flaming across the skies these days.

</comment><comment><USER5> Academia can easily retain us. Pay us more and support our work.

I love my field very much; the only three things that have me considering leaving academia: Poor salary outlook; PhD + 10 years domain expertise? $50k. Poor job liquidity; zero geographic choice. Professors rarely appear to be happy/terrible work-life balance due to administrative overhead and the need to secure future funds.

All of these concerns can be resolved with money, through both higher salaries and better funding. If they were resolved, I wouldn't be looking outside at all.

If you have great management and need someone who's good with precision hardware, sensing, and data analysis in the Seattle area, please get in touch.

</comment><comment><USER6> An interesting read (along with the sister article pointed out by tom_b, linked in the original). It is relevant for me as within about a year I will leave my current position as a postdoctoral scientist. I consider myself more heavily weighted towards the "domain specialist" and "probability/statistics" foundation, but would still be considered a data scientist by many. The article is concerned with making academia more attractive so as to stop off loss of data scientists to industry, but I am also wondering whether or not there might be some fit within industry that has perks like those in academia. So I will try to ask for some advice, as someone with an open mind towards both academic and industrial position, but with no experience in the latter...

In applying for position in industry what sort of strategies are there to maximize time allocated to discretionary research/independent projects/etc. Lets say I am willing to work a maximum of 60 hours a week, and that I have some idea in mind for a minimum salary (I dare not say the actual number). How can I negotiate a contract where 10-15 of those hours go towards personal projects that might be only loosely aligned with the firm's objective? Is this even possible for someone just starting out? For example, could I take a pay deduction? Or should I just think about reducing the total number of hours I work for the company?

Does anyone have experience applying for research grants within industry (of small to medium size)?

</comment><comment><USER7> The "unreasonable effectiveness of data" in finding publishable results and creating commercially viable products ought to be blinding us (or rather "them" \- AI researchers of whom I'm not one) to better ways to learn. A child learns to speak and recognize objects from much less data than contemporary machine learning/data mining/AI/whatever you call it needs.

Of course it's much better to keep your program small and your data sets huge than the other way around - we'd all do it if we could. But it ought to be a lot like keeping a 2^64-N look-up table to implement 32b integer multiplication; it's ultimately larger and costlier than figuring out how multiplication works, and you give wrong results for the N entries missing in your table.

Or something along those lines. (Of course natural languages are "scruffier"/not as "neat" as multiplication - but demonstrably not as scruffy as to be impossible to reasonably learn in any way except reading everything ever written and translated into another language.)

<comment><USER8> _> "A child learns to speak and recognize objects from much less data than contemporary machine learning/data mining/AI/whatever you call it needs."_

You think?

When a kid starts talking at 1.5, 2, 3 years or whenever they're doing so after being exposed to many thousands of hours of input, much of it effectively guided.

Also, as far as I know, we don't have nearly enough understanding of the way the brain works to make a useful comparison between "records" fed to a model and all the analog input that goes into making a person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the key factor here is that with the new tools and power in computation big data is everywhere. Intelligent and creative people can use this tools to create models and new hypothesis that they can refine and sharp with the new data. This is like Lisp and its meta capabilities. We can design programs that create general hypothesis (macros) and then those tests are macro-expanded to create functions that specialize and refine the model and hypothesis. The power of computation and the availability of rich sources of data (sensors, NLP, twiiter, and so on) allow us to think in ways that were a dead end before the big data era.

Is the new tools and powerful computational capabilities what rewards those with the inspiration and creativity required to get the most of it. Industry or Academia is a false dichotomy, what is needed here is a new way of thinking to explore and create hypothesis in a way that was not possible before the big data era.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm also interested in the unreasonable effectiveness of data in both reenforcing an illusion of control and rationalizing our preexisting prejudices - a commonality between quants in finance, data science in business, and mainstream science (as Ioannidis is teaching us.)

Anything that improves and grounds statistics in some sort of concrete, more falsifiable context is a good thing. Maybe new people attacking from a different perspective can help.

</comment><comment><USER11> Whenever I hear about "brain drain" it always means "someone provides better conditions".</comment>


[Mozilla Developer] Mihai Șucan: Touched - <AUTHOR> http://mihai.sucan.ro/mihai/blog/touched

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link. His thoughts are amazing and thought provoking. Left this world too early :(</comment>


Coming Soon in Google Docs: Third Party Apps, Cloud Printing and Sync - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/11/coming-soon-in-google-docs-third-party.html

<comment><USER2> I think mainly i'd like to see a MS Office plugin. I do so much work using endnote to manage my references and have my Endnote library and office docs in a dropbox, but it is frustrating that I need to remember to close Word & Endnote in order for dropbox to upload the latest version of the file.

Would much prefer a seamless transition between editing at home on my large computer, and working on google docs on whatever PC I can currently get access to.

</comment><comment><USER3> They seem to ignore a lot of low hanging fruit, like adding more locales. I have often wondered why they don't have a "South Africa" locale for example.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cloud printing, "revolutionary" like what Adobe had bundled with a Reader many years ago? Did anybody ever use it? Or "revolutionary" like plug and play printers (actually "lan printing" and not "cloud printing")?

</comment><comment><USER5> Currently the development builds of chromium also have footprints for Cloud Printing. It would be nice to see more about that working in the web services level.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would be curious to hear what kinds of third-party applications people would like to see in Google Docs if they do end up making this possible.

</comment><comment><USER6> This sounds great, but what I really want is to simply edit docs on my iPad. I heard it's coming, but I hope soon.</comment>


Wiping Out $90,000 in Student Loans in 7 Months - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wiping-out--90-000-in-student-loans-in-7-months.html

<comment><USER2> According to the article step one is getting a job with a six-figure salary. Why didn't I think of that?!

</comment><comment><USER3> _Mihalic said he spent months taking a flask of liquor to bars so he could continue to go out drinking with friends without running up a tab._

Even better for the wallet, the liver, and the streets...you could be a designated driver for your friends and have them pitch in for gas and parking, and some bars will even comp your nonalcoholic drinks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> His blog is nomoreharvarddebt.com, and includes a detailed breakdown of his spending habits. I always see posts about bootstrapping on here, and as intrigued as I am, they often lack specifics, so this was incredibly helpful to an aspiring 18 year old entrepreneur entering college.

P.S. If anyone knows of a series of blog posts or even a book that breaks down the expenses (business and personal) of bootstrapping I startup, I'd definitely be interested!

<comment><USER4> Clickable: <http://nomoreharvarddebt.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unless he had crazy high rates on those loans even the most conservative investments would have put him in a better position over time. There is no real reason to be frantic about paying debts, especially if you have a Harvard degree and a six figure job.

Also, I doubt this article is going to help anyone. The majority of people stressing about their 6 figure loans are not in his situation.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure this was an emotional decision. I'm sure he had the tools to figure out that he coud cut back a little and save it over time, but he wanted nothing to do with it – what's wrong with being debt free anyways?

<comment><USER5> There's nothing wrong with wanting to be debt free and he's in a great position now. I just think that it's possible that he left some money on the table to do this quickly.

<comment><USER6> Maybe, maybe not.

Mathematically yes, but there's no guarantee that he could have done it over a longer period of time if he was exhausted mentally.

This is the same logic behind Dave Ramsey's debt snowball where you pay your smallest amount off first. It's terrible mathematical advice, but it's a psychological trick that helps you focus on small wins after each other and build rewarding habits

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand the "student loan crisis". Go to college, start at six figures, pay off loans. What's hard about that?

<comment><USER8> Probably the "start at six figures" part, which for most (non-CS) graduates is, at best, impossible.

<comment><USER9> Even many of us CS grads (though CIS in my case). Not all of us are the top talent able to command a 6 figure income right out of college. :(

Edit: Also, cost of living differences

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it interesting that people are willing to take a mortgage out on a house (he did this as everyone does) and fully understand that it is totally reasonable to have to take 30 years to pay that off, or pay for a car over 3 to 5 years, but for some reason of all things, a Harvard education which they owe $90,000 on, is a burden that needs to be retired as quickly as possible.

There is nothing inherently wrong about paying over time for something you will use over time.

Added: Save the obvious publicity bonus (noted by the WSJ and in the WSJ of all places) he could have done this more easily over the course of 2 to 5 years with normal cutbacks even assuming no salary increases.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. And worse, the article states he saved $40K by paying in one year vs 15 years, which implies that his interest rate was around 3%. That's inflation! He could have effectively had the same savings by just _waiting_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Holy shit. I know this guy - went to school with him.

</comment><comment><USER13> Reading his blog, he also seems to have matured a lot in the past 7 months. He now talks about early retirement, financial security etc.</comment>


How 2 Murderers Escaped from a New York Maximum-Security Prison - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/08/nyregion/prison-escape.html

<comment><USER2> yeah, i'm going to have to disagree with this one. far more likely they had outside help, i.e. someone broke in and got them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder why nighttime bed checks aren't done using some sort of handheld thermal infrared device? It would be harder to spoof IR than just fashioning "dummies from sweatshirts".

And somehow none of the guards heard the "power tools"?

There's a lot more to this story than we've heard so far.

<comment><USER4> _I wonder why nighttime bed checks aren 't done using some sort of handheld thermal infrared device?_

Because those devices cost a lot of money, these events are incredibly rare, the 'cost' to a prison of a successful escape is quite low and prisons have to turn a profit.</comment></comment>


Former Valve employee details his experience at the self-organizing company - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8zyomv/former_valve_employee_details_his_experience_at/ <comment><USER2> One of my earlierst HN Comments is describing my desire to work for Valve because their self-organized style seemed to be the utopia I always dreamed about. Back then I thought I didn't have what it takes to even Interview. Maybe I didn't, still I feel I've dodged a massive bullet.

</comment><comment> et-al Thanks for sharing this. Might be helpful to link to the original Reddit thread [0] or the employee's Twitter [1]:

[0] - [https://np.reddit.com/r/valve/comments/8zmp07/former_valve_e...](https://np.reddit.com/r/valve/comments/8zmp07/former_valve_employee_tweets_his_experience_at/)

[1] - [https://twitter.com/richgel999](https://twitter.com/richgel999)

And here's a Pastebin mirror: [https://pastebin.com/d199N7eY](https://pastebin.com/d199N7eY)

(Admittedly I didn't read past the first block compiled by FloydiusMaximus.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Words of wisdom over hundreds of tweets. I'd probably want to fire anyone that thinks this is a good idea.

<comment><USER4> I think most of my concerns center around this being an impulsive stream of clearly stress based posts. I think a lot of really good conversation could have been raised, which I fear may be lost by a) the stream of conscious nature of the posts, and b) a lack of better editing or personal judgement on a bit of the content.

The frustration shines through, but so does a lot of "advice" about dealing with an unhealthy culture in an even more unhealthy way.

I wish the author the best, the little I know of his past work seems solid. I commend raising these issues, but it raises a few red flags with me in the manner of execution.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are my options for state-by-state DNS geo-relocation? - <AUTHOR> Are there any lightweight DNS solutions which would let me relocate my DNS to a neighboring market?  I'm in CT and my DNS geolocates me to the NYC market, but I'd occasionally like to geolocate to the Boston market.  Most DNS relocators I've found provide regional geolocation, but I haven't found anything at a state-by-state level.  Is somehow routing DNS through a Boston-based family member's home network my only option, or are there services which could accomplish this as-well? <comment><USER2> I'm curious why you need this. [Note: I am not trying to be coy or critical, I am simply curious.]

<comment><AUTHOR> Sports. I'd rather watch the Bruins than the Rangers.

<comment><USER2> Ah, yes, stupid blackouts. I'm not sure this is going to fix things for you, but I haven't tried it, either. A VPN might be more effective, though I suspect they're on to that these days. Personally, I just picked a different team to watch.</comment></comment></comment>


Towards copy-evident JPEG images - pdf - <AUTHOR> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~abl26/info09-jpeg.pdf <comment><USER2> Precis: a technology for a sub-visible, targeted watermark is presented,, where a targeted watermark is one that only becomes visible when the right parameter is passed to the reveal algorithm. The reveal algorithm is a parametric compression algorithm; with the right parameter the watermark becomes visible.</comment>


Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/#intcid=recommendations_default-popular_cbc85eb3-20fb-4300-a292-678d0caa6647_cral-top3-1 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684463)

</comment><comment><USER3> This title really hit me

It reminds me of when I was traveling alone for two years of my life. I remember when I got to a point that I could be in the most beautiful place you can think of, and I wasn't impressed. Only later on I realized I was depressed.

There wasn't any balance in my life. After many months of traveling, I should stop and leave a taste for more. But I didn't.

The funny thing about balance is that its individual feeling and the only way to understand it is to cross your limits.

Whenever it's traveling, or working on google, or running your own company, in the end, the concept is the same in all of them

</comment><comment><USER4> This is almost impossible to read on a phone due to the unremovable nagging $$$ overlay covering half the screen.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://outline.com/XUCRBr](https://outline.com/XUCRBr)</comment>


What Free Software Is So Good You Can't Believe It's Free? (Reddit) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/atxdcb/what_free_software_is_so_good_you_cant_believe/ <comment><USER2> the libraries/packages for all the languages we use, pip install $20,000 of work so i don't have to do it.

database stuff like postgres, sqlite is especially lovely for portability and ease of deployment.

Firefox, libreoffice, gimp, vlc, and Linux, Ubuntu particularly.

evince and calibre

compression software / archivers like 7zip

cli stuff like mosh, irssi, and htop.

i essentially no longer use proprietary software not out of any moral or economic stance, but just because it either does less or is vastly less extensible or takes too long to deploy or can't be trusted.

open software is wonderful.

<comment><USER3> $20K sounds like an underestimate by a couple orders of magnitude if you estimate a single year of full time work by one developer at $100K.

Many mid-sized Python projects use libraries that I'd guess together represent somewhere between $2M and $200M in developer hours - depending on whether you're using frameworks or just relatively simple libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cue 100 comments about "you are paying with your data", but I use the following tools (happily) without paying for them with money: Gmail and the Google suite of products (drive, chrome, etc), Feedly, various social networks, Hubspot CRM, eventvods.com (I donate to them), Trello, Goofy (FB messenger for desktop), Sublime Text, RescueTime, AutoMute, Flux, Metabase.

<comment><USER5> So you use another client with gmail or are you okay with their slow interface?

<comment><USER4> I am pretty happy with the interface.

<comment><USER5> Personally, I can't understand that. Gmail was horrible on chrome and now that I'm on ff, it's even worse. The initial load is slower than loading outlook and queuing multiple commands is horrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Android

2\. VLC and it's dependencies

3\. Linux!!

4\. Vscode

5\. Node

6\. GCC, Clang, Cmake ...

7\. Git

8\. Chromium

9\. Webassembly, emscripten

<comment><USER7> \- Inkscape \- ffmpeg \- Firefox \- mpd

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> GCC and KDE

</comment><comment><USER9> Blender. C'mon now.</comment>


Is React killing Angular? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Is-React-killing-Angular?share=1 <comment><USER2> This seems to be a pretty old question. Personally I feel that React + Redux + Fetch (or Axios) give you all that you need that you would get from Angular. I find that React works more tightly with the greater JS ecosystem, while the Angular team seems fixated on fighting against it.

I feel that I'd rather have JSX (with a few gotchas that make a lot of sense) using straight JS constructs over weird templating DSL that you get from Angular, and changed in Angular 2+. I don't think it's merging concerns so much as separating them in a way that makes more sense.

I do think that redux/flux-like structures are harder to get started with, but they scale linearly compared to what is common in Angular projects. Some of the binding in Angular in particular is pretty hard to deal with, and side effects and the fact you need to know about $scope.$apply in the first place doesn't help. With ng2, now you have constructs out of RxJS that you have to understand to be effective in some areas.

Angular was born in a time before CommonJS modules were popular, or module loaders, or even npm. That said, the rest of the JS world has moved on, and Angular 2 isn't enough to overcome.

IMHO React is a _much_ saner approach to testable components, and have meaningful errors that actually help. The WTFs are few and far between, and totally make sense in context. With Angular, there were far more WTFs and most of the time you didn't get any meaningful errors at all, it just didn't work right.

Most of my problems with Angular 1.x are better in >= 2, but by no means all gone, and I just don't think the team "gets" what is desired in terms of support outside TypeScript.

</comment><comment><USER3> I dont care much about js libs. But the reason i completely ignore react is because i cant trust facebook to not mess it up at some point.</comment>


Business 2.0 vs. Valleywag - <AUTHOR> http://publishing2.com/2007/06/14/business-20-vs-valleywag/ <comment><USER2> _'... Business 2.0 had a smart response to Om Malik's departure - turn all of their writers into bloggers and create a blog network ... challenge for Business 2.0 is that all of these writers also have to put out a print magazine ...'_

Someone who gets the changes occurring in newspaper & print world. Another problem is being able to morph content that's blogged into print quality articles along with all the associated things we have come to expect of _good_ print articles (journalists that can do fact checking, citing, entertain and get copy out the door at the same time)</comment>


Zimbardo's Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qlEcNiK8CBkJOU1YMyz_OSWIIAq6sMXl/view <comment><USER2> Previous HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287319](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287319)

I have no strong opinions either way, but one meta-point I personally find interesting is: why don't journalists send a final draft of an article to the people involved and get a final round of comments? That just seems fair. Zimbardo claims some facts in the article are simply wrong, and either 1) those errors would be corrected, or 2) Zimbardo's response to those claims could stand side-by-side, instead of this bifurcated situation of articles and response articles.

I think it would be even better if these arguments were in a wiki (or git) style instead of a series of articles.

<comment><USER3> Having worked as a journalist previously, it's funny how this is often almost impossible in practice. Most of the time subjects don't want to comment, ignore, or responses are handled by a PR person who doesn't provide adequate comment. Then, when you do publish and you get X detail wrong they blast you, or the subject themselves bemoans how they were never given the opportunity to comment. Not that journalists are above reproach but I can't tell you how many times people got annoyed about not being able to to tell their side of the story or how X or Y was misrepresented when they were given countless ops to do put forward their own case.

Attitude toward journalists these days, partly because of more professionalised PR is hugely adversarial rather than co-operative. Anyway /rant.

<comment><USER4> Giving a statement to a journalist who has already made up their mind that you're a bad guy is probably a mistake. Especially when it comes to politics, the other side will take whatever you say out of context and present it in the light most unfavorable to you. Morally-exculpatory nuance goes out the window, or buried at the bottom of the article (the part that we know no one reads). The headline will be spun to make you sound like a monster (see CNN's headlines about Mr. Damore: that he thought "women are biologically unfit for tech jobs").

Most people should make all statements with the assistance of professional PR if they're in such a situation. Just like how anyone being interrogated by the police should only speak with the advice with a lawyer, no matter how innocent they actually are.

<comment><USER3> True, there are 100 per cent people on vendettas hatchet jobs but more reputable publishers are better at curtailing the ill-will of a single writer.

<comment><USER5> There are many people that believe CNN is a reputable publisher. Even after the Japan fish feeding hoax, fabrications about the contents of the Damore memo, and even denying their own "I'm sure in individual cases" interview with Obama administration re: child seperation this last 24 hours.

Quick edit due to downmods: dear partisan Americans: I don't particularly care for either side of your politics. I'm not saying Fox is any better, and I think Donald Trump's a nasty and very hypocritical individual. But 1 and 3 are easily proven false on video, and 2 is clearly different from the content of the Damore memo, which you can read online. You're lying to yourself if you refuse to believe evidence about CNN fabricating any of these stories.

As @Notradamus says before, giving a quote to a journalist allows them to shape the story. There is no reason to do that: you can self publish and still reach the masses in your own words, without risking someone else cutting video, lying about you, or denying something happened even when they filmed it themselves.

<comment><USER6> I'm not a partisan American (particularly not the latter), but I find your anti-CNN rant to be an irrelevant distraction in this topic.

<comment><USER5> The parent makes the point that one should use a reputable publisher. I'm arguing that publishers generally considered reputable aren't particularly different from those that are not (as the parent to that correctly notes, with fewer examples). What do you think isn't relevant?

<comment><USER7> Because nothing you said disproves what the parent said, it simply gave an annecdote about what bad things a publisher did, unless you would categorize those as "ill-will of a single writer".

Claiming systematic bias can also lead to that would have been fine in contrast, maybe even mentioning it has happened vaugely and bringing up your CNN example when challenged.

The down votes are likely because your post could seemingly be summarized as "but Fake News" which has people on edge. Sure that isn't what you said but your phrasing makes that an easy mistake to make as a reader.

<comment><USER5> > Because nothing you said disproves what the parent said, it simply gave an > annecdote about what bad things a publisher did, unless you would categorize > those as "ill-will of a single writer".

Well the general implication in the paresnt discussing fabrication as 'the ill of a single writer' and that a reputable publication should curtail them. You're right in that a 'reputable publication' may also simply deliberately craft lies as an organisation, rather than this happening as the result of the individual journalist.

> The down votes are likely because your post could seemingly be summarized as > "but Fake News" which has people on edge.

Hence the edit restating that every single one of those is either well known or provable. Anyone can watch the unedited fish feeding video, read Damore's original memo, or see the CNN interview wherethe Obama admin talks about sepration happening. Something being a popular saying doesn't make it untrue. A more simple an likely explanation is that a US citizen's understanding of reality is now determined on a tribal basis rather than a factual one.

<comment><USER7> > Hence the edit restating that every single one of those is either well known > or provable.

But news organizations lie. All of them do and they do it on a routine basis.

On the topic of your examples:

1\. It appears that the article recognizes the normality in its last sentence, so this was corrected 2\. I don't see anything in the Damore article ([http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/15/technology/culture/james- dam...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/15/technology/culture/james-damore- interview/index.html)) that seemed to disagree with his memo unless I am missing a subtly. 3\. This seems to be a failure to acknowledge and not a fabrication best I can tell (too difficult to find what disputes the original comment)

These seems to be examples where CNN has corrected the stories quietly instead of issuing a retraction best I can tell which while I agree is annoying at least is ensuring the latest version of the article is as accurate as possible (including in "accuracy" intended tone here). How to best handle such corrections is hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?

<comment><USER8> What I find interesting are the people who are absolutely _fanatical_ about disputing Zimbardo's conclusions. It's as if it's very important to them personally to be able to classify potential perpetrators of atrocities into two simplistic categories, People Who Do Stuff Like That and People Who, Somehow, Magically, Don't. Any experiments that might reveal human nature as the ultimate culprit are considered politically incorrect and unacceptable to perform.

Yes, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a dumpster fire. But so was the Nazi regime. When you want to study dumpster fires, you could do worse than to start a small-scale dumpster fire of your own and see how things progress.

<comment> knight-of-lambd Well said. I think it's instinctual to want to believe there is some intrinsic, insurmountable difference between us and them (people who do morally repugnant things). At the heart of it, it's tribalism.

This quote from Solzhenitsyn springs to mind. I have always kept it close to heart:

>If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

<comment><USER9> > Well said. I think it's instinctual to want to believe there is some > intrinsic, insurmountable difference between us and them (people who do > morally repugnant things). At the heart of it, it's tribalism.

Or maybe they're just tired of crap science that just won't die.

When you want to make your point, just use "Lord of the Flies" instead. It makes compelling, similar points about the human condition. But it just does it as a novel, not as a fake experiment.

<comment> knight-of-lambd For a more solid experiment, there's the BBC prison study: [http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org](http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org)

Different conclusions, just as fascinating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah yes, the Stanford Prison Experiment, which makes serious psychologists sigh and roll there eyes. Putting aside ethical considerations, it was so confounded as to be completely useless.

<comment><USER11> It's taken seriously enough to be taught in every university survey course on psychology and sociology, and that wouldn't still be happening if the "serious" people in those disciplines wanted to stop.

<comment><USER12> I was taught it.... in a way to say "this is not how to research things and if you heard about this you should probabbly rethink anything you think about it".

<comment><USER13> _> "this is not how to research things _

Yes, this is how it was taught to me also.

An example of "how not to do it" and something that would never pass the ethical review board in modern academia.

<comment><USER14> Whilst that may indeed be what you were taught, Jared M. Bartels paints a rather different picture of what introductory textbooks have been found to say on this subject.

* [http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1475725714568007](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1475725714568007)

<comment><USER13> You're right actually. I recall the textbooks did present the study in a different light to what we were taught in class. Interestingly the discussion in these textbooks never went into much detail, usually just providing a brief overview of it and noting that it was "important".

As a more mature reader I might read between the lines there and wonder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's there to debate? Run it 2 or 3 times again. Publish the results.

Is that not the definition of Science?

<comment><USER16> I think that the experiment would struggle to pass ethical review these days, so this might never be possible.

<comment><USER17> In the US and other countries with similar ethical standards.

It might be doable in other countries that have different ethical standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Zimbardo has lost all credibility, the fact that this begins with anything but a point-by-point refutation of the Medium article just highlights that fact.

The Medium article was highly illuminating and included so many different sources that Zimbardo's response here just reads as a desperate attempt to regain credibility that's LONG gone.

</comment><comment><USER19> > He had befriended both Carlo and me in an attempt to get me to agree to give > him screen rights to a Hollywood movie about the SPE. When instead, I chose > to go with Maverick Films producer, Brent Emery, Lazarou began writing > negative critiques of both me and the SPE.

Why does anyone need Zimbardo's permission to write a screenplay involving the SPE?

</comment><comment><USER20> Zimbardo is a disgrace. There are legitimate results in the field of psychology, but the Stanford Prison Experiment is not one of them. All it ever proved was that Zimbardo's ethics was highly compromised.

In the final paragraph, he claims to be "promoting what is best in human nature. That in [sic] my current life mission." In reality the only thing he's ever been good at promoting is himself. And I know this is trivial and stupid, but he couldn't even avoid a typo in the last line of his rebuttal? Come on.

</comment><comment><USER21> This guy is completely unethical. In addition to his famous 'Prison Experiment' he engaged in relations with one of his graduate students.

Psychology is full of hucksters like Zimbardo.

<comment><USER22> Sure, Psychology isn't much of a science, but the list of college professors who didn't sleep with students in the 70s has to be very, very, short.

<comment><USER23> Since when is psychology not much of a science?

<comment><USER24> I'm guessing valuearb means the few decades of research that lead up to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psycholo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psychology) ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If anything, this whole debacle has revealed to me how pathetic the whole "science" of psychology is in its current state.

I mean, the emblem of its field can't even acknowledge any flaw in his experiment. I'm not saying it was bogus, but it's pretty obviously biased and flawed in many ways. Even if executed with perfect methodology, which it clearly wasn't, that sample size and the bias in participants literally provides no value.

At least if they had the humility to acknowledge how primitive the whole thing was, and that there's much more to learn. But it seems they're just like, here it is folks, undeniable unarguable proof, we're done, let's close shop.

I mean, has the field of psychology given us anything of value? I'm asking genuinely. I'm now under the impression it did not. In fact, it seems it has mostly been used as a tool to justify atrocities under the guise of science instead of religion, more often then it actually enabled us to understand ourselves better and thus organise our society more optimally, or correct and alter negative behaviours.

<comment><USER26> > If anything, this whole debacle has revealed to me how pathetic the whole > "science" of psychology is in its current state.

What? How an academic being defensive of his study, conducted in 1971, an invalidation of "current" psychology? That's 40 years ago.

> I mean, has the field of psychology given us anything of value? I'm asking > genuinely.

What an extreme leap, and an odd generalization for me to have to argue against. How about Milgram, Asch, Cognitive Dissonance? Studies of memory, vision, neurons can inform the development of AI. Things like IQ tests have helped detect and prove that leaded gasoline was damaging the intellect of a generation. Psychology is THE field to give clarity to question such as what gender dysphoria is about (research shows it is usually correlated with a brain that is more structurally similar to the gender one identifies as [1]).

So I'm not sure where a wholesale indictment of a field could really come from.

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

<comment><USER25> That wiki link, did you read the section on psychology in it? It pretty much reinforces my opionion. Seems like most of the real understanding of it is coming from biological factors.

Now it seems that those initial psychological theories were all argued with similarly low sample and methodologically wonky studies. Just paraphrasing the wikipedia link. In effect, that probably hurt more then it helped and that's why we're starting to see things like Denmark declassifying it as no longer a mental disorder.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where- transgender...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-transgender- is-no-longer-a-diagnosis/)

Edit: I know I'm making a big blanket statement. As someone who does not read about all the latest psychological breakthrough, I'm saying in honesty that with my limited knowledge, the impression I get from psychological research is that its not very thorough. So I'm open to hearing that in the last 40 years this has changed, an example would be great, so that I can start maybe changing my opinion.

<comment><USER26> 1\. I provided 6 separate examples of the use of psychology (3 experiments, 3 real-world use-cases). You responded to one.

2\. Something being biological is not contrary to it being psychological.

Your response is disingenuous. You certainly are well-aware that your blanket statement was a rash, emotional inaccuracy. Rather than concede that point, you're choosing to try to nit-pick at one sixth of the refutation.

This is HN, best just to admit your mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Psychology isn't falsifiable. It is not science.

<comment><USER28> Not _necessarily._ In an ideal world psychology could be scientific.

In this world, however, we observe that the Behaviorists, who were uniquely concerned with holding psychology to _strict_ scientific standards, where ganged up upon and hounded out of the field. The hounders can't be trusted.

<comment><USER23> Behaviorism isn't simply about holding psychology to a higher scientific standard and it is misguided to imply it is the only psychological paradigm to have done so. As an easy counterexample, take a look at cognitive psychology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> He should STFU and be glad he isn't in prison for kidnapping.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone who is criticizing this experiment I challenge to go undercover as a prison guard or go work for ICE. In fact many journalists have done this in the past.

Dehumanization of the other mixed in with a bit of fear and _poof_ civilization is out the window. Hello Colonel Kurtz.

<comment><USER31> The effect the experiment attempts to demonstrate can be true while the prison experiment itself can be complete sham.</comment></comment>


BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis reportedly considering bid - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/21/4755696/blackberry-co-founder-mike-lazaridis-reportedly-considering-bid

<comment><USER2> BlackBerry is doomed and not because they don't make good products (BB10), but because their image is so tarnished and their reputation has been severely damaged. I have no idea how their going to change the perception that their phones are slow and lame. Maybe they can sell out to someone that knows how to market.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If it ran as efficiently as a start-up, it just might work.</comment>


Brute Force Rendering Using Google App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.eddiescholtz.com/entry/google-app-engine-rendering

<comment><USER2> Cool, but this: "Much to my surprise, my Java implementation performed nearly as well as the c++ version!"

Made me sigh. How long will it take to convince people that the JVM really is actually pretty fast these days [1] and comparable with native code for the majority of tasks?

[1] [http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/which-programming- lan...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/which-programming-languages- are-fastest.php?calc=chart&gcc=on&javasteady=on&java=on&clojure=on)

<comment><USER3> I read that line as a indication that Java wasn't his go-to language and he just wasn't as comfortable with Java. Sort of a "wow I did better than I thought." I would imagine anyone capable of building three versions of a unique renderer would know that java can be pretty fast.

Just playing devils advocate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not clear how app engine is really helping here... or is this just something he mentions as a theoretical possibility? To make use of all of those cpus I'd think he'd need to distribute the load using the task queue, or if necessary, multistep fan-out / fan-in with the help of the pipeline library.

</comment><comment><USER5> It looks like you need to switch to GPU rendering. Here's a similar example, done in WebGL, it renders very nicely in a browser, hundreds times faster than your renerer:

<http://madebyevan.com/webgl-path-tracing/>

(switch material to mirror, it's pretty cool)</comment>


The Economic Naturalist - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/why-do-retirees-buy-such-big-houses-and-other-riddles-from-the-economic-naturalist/ I recommend Robert H. Frank's book "The Economic Naturalist" for insight into everyday economics (extracts at http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/why-do-reti... and http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/more-from-t...).   As those URLs suggest, it is of the Freakonomics genre, though IMHO better than the original Freaknomics by being broader and more fundamental.  Ch 3 ("Why equally talented workers often earn different salaries...") resonates with PG's articles about inequality/productivity, though unfortunately I can't find extracts from that chapter online. <comment><USER2> I thought the square milk, round pop question was a cool example of "When you've got a hammer" Ask an economics class why milk is square and they'll talk about the marginal cost of refrigerator space and packaging, while the engineer (from the comments) will first think of carbonated milk and exploding milk cartons.

I'm reminded of my square-milk-carton-ginger-ale-brewing experiment that my wife eyed nervously every time she saw it bulging in the back of the fridge.</comment>


Good Graphs: Graphical Perception and Data Visualization - <AUTHOR> http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2009/08/good-graphs-graphical-perception-and-data-visualization/

<comment><AUTHOR> One point is graphing did not begin and end with Tufte.</comment>