Police act like laws don't apply to them because of Qualified Immunity - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/05/30/police-george-floyd-qualified-immunity-supreme-court-column/5283349002/ <comment><USER2> They need to double the pay for cops and remove their protections like qualified immunity and the right to fire if they feel threatened. This is the only way we get higher quality cops in the system, we incentivize better people to join with money. Maybe once we have a critical mass of great cops we will need less cops overall.

All of these extra costs associated with overtime etc because of these riots and looting are a direct result of employing shitty cops and completely avoidable. The costs should be taken directly from the pension funds of cops as far as I'm concerned, cities should not bear the costs of overtime because of riots caused by cops killing people.

If we had a critical mass of good cops, we likely would need less overtime overall because the relationship would be better between law enforcement and citizens, especially minorities.

<comment><USER3> My neighbor is a Sargent in the local PD. Town of 300K. He made $140K last year ($40K of it OT). I think the notion that police are underpaid is not accurate, at least here.

<comment><USER2> My point is we should pay cops very high salaries, $300k+ to attract those that might go into other professions.

<comment><USER4> You seem to equate high salary with compassion. What is this notion based on?

<comment><USER5> It's less about compassion and more about risk. Risk in the sense of the physical danger an officer goes into, but also in the sense that we are removing protections for the officer and holding them to a higher standard.

<comment><USER6> The most common cause of death for police officers is traffic fatalities. Should we pay highway construction crews 300K+?

<comment><USER7> That's a terrible analogy. Obviously they're more at risk of dying a violent death and that's why they need to pay more

<comment><USER8> Not really: they're safer at work than you are at home. Police work is very safe in the USA. But it can be very unpleasant and stressful.

The idea that policing is inherently dangerous is most useful to police when negotiating the next contract.

<comment><USER7> That is absolutely not true and I don't know why you think that, other than you're super sheltered. You have no clue what you're talking about

Tell me why the Mexican Mafia has no teeth. Enlighten me. Tell me why the Aryan Brotherhood is less dangerous than Kubernetes

It's not ever worth discussing with y'all, seriously. The privilege here is so insane, you've obviously never been anywhere near a ghetto

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have been meta-worried about the optics of protests because as a student of history i see echoes of 1964 and 1968, and i am horrified at the idea of a "law and order" second term.

USA Today publishing something like this does a bit to assuage my fears! For the non-American HN audience, USA Today is the anodyne newspaper you get for free at a business hotel chain with your crappy refrigerated muffin or yogurt and instant coffee. It's about as intentionally bland and inoffensive to everyone newspaper as still exists.

If the message there is this, we might pull it off and meaningfully address something instead of wanking about protestors like we usually do.

<comment><USER10> I'll raise you one level of meta, and note how surprised I am that the discourse right here on HN, which is normally populated heavily with a... let's say reactionary conservative worldview... has swung hard to the "left" on this issue and others in recent weeks.

Indeed the perception of "mainstream" seems to have shifted away from the messaging the administration wants to present in lots of forums like this.

<comment><USER11> HN is more libertarian than conservative. The libertarianism often aligns HN with conservatives, but HN and conservatives diverge wildly when it comes to government overreach, whether that be police brutality, cryptography regulation, or the war on drugs.

Note how even within the police brutality issue, HN is focusing on organisational incentives for police recruiting and conduct instead of the more mainstream race angle. HN believes in well-designed systems of incentives. The (ideal of the) free market with appropriate minimal regulations is the dream, which usually sides HN with small-c conservatives on economic issues and even makes HN look reactionary from time to time.

Of course, as you say, the administration is anathema to any group of intellectuals. And I'm sure previous administrations would have spun their cases to be more appealing to HN and similar forums. But I don't think the basic position of HN on police brutality is particularly new or surprising.

Disclaimer: Obviously HN is many people who have many opinions which I wrote as a single entity for convenience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They have immunity and no requirement to protect

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

<comment><USER13> Which kinda seems like a bad deal for society. No guarantee of (an attempt at) protection, but immunity for those who abuse the power of the state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's sad to see how little progress has been made on concrete reforms that would meaningfully reduce these problems. Curtailing qualified immunity, and limiting the power of police unions to protect "bad apples" is something with bi-partisan ideological support.

[https://www.heritage.org/courts/commentary/less- government-m...](https://www.heritage.org/courts/commentary/less-government- more-gorsuch)

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming- poli...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming- police/supreme-court-gives-police-green-light-shoot-first-and)

[https://www.cato.org/blog/why-qualified- immunity](https://www.cato.org/blog/why-qualified-immunity)

You'd think reforms to qualified immunity--which everyone from the ACLU to Heritage to Cato agrees on--would be on the fast track to legislation, at least in left-leaning states. There is no reason a state like California, where politicians habitually genuflect to social justice, couldn't pass legislation to create causes of action against police officers that aren't subject to the federal constitution's qualified immunity doctrine. None at all. Instead, for some reason the debate is now about whether rioting and property destruction is an acceptable response to police brutality--an extreme position that is not going to carry the day with anyone but a tiny minority.

<comment><USER4> Police unions are the real problem in this situation. There will always be criminal cops. As long as they are protected by corrupt and powerful unions - they will have very little incentive to change.

<comment><USER10> I don't know that the unions are the problem per se. They're just the face of the advocacy for the interests of criminal cops (which isn't surprising: it's literally their job to advocate for their members).

In fact when this gets polled, police rank and file are absolutely behind their "bad apple" compatriots. There is deep mistrust of public oversight within the law enforcement community as a whole, and that doesn't have to do with their labor organization.

<comment><USER4> From my (limited) understanding of the role of police unions in cases like that, they basically threaten local governments and demand no prosecution for their members. They hold the keys to more public oversight and accountability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd like to point out that even when police officers have their hearts in the right places, they don't do themselves any favors by going after those in blue who abuse their power. We have heard countless stories of police officers that crossed the blue line to do what was right, only for extreme retaliation to occur, to the point of getting fired, harassed, assaulted, stalked, and even murdered.

And the idea that people can just join the police force with good intentions is fatally flawed. The police is a hierarchical organization with a culture that is characterized by its top down command structure. In order to have any influence at all, you have to be at the top...and by the time you get to the top, you're assimilated into the culture. It is self perpetuating.

Absent of firing all the police and starting over from scratch (an option I'm oddly not opposed to), I think the only way we can accomplish this is with strong carrots and even stronger sticks. Taking away qualified immunity is just the first step.

We have laws that punish doctors and lawyers and even commercial truck drivers more harshly when they commit crimes that directly relate to their jobs, under the premise that they know better and should be held to a higher standard. No such laws exist for police, but they should.

I think most importantly though is that we need to protect those who break ranks for good reasons. Retaliation, in any way, shape, or form, by police officers for enforcing the law against another police officer, should be a Class A felony with sentencing in the double digits. And we shouldn't just stop there. Good cops that enforce the law against bad cops deserve our protection, much like how we go out of our way to protect witnesses and whistle-blowers.

And not only that, but there should _never_ be investigations into criminal misconduct by a police officer by other police officers of the same jurisdiction. Once it crosses the line from department policy violation to criminal violation, that investigation should be handed over to a superceding jurisdiction, and any local jurisdiction on the matter should be voided.

<comment><USER16> > firing all the police and starting over from scratch

I honestly think this might be the only true solution. We have to have police. But right now we have such an entrenched, caustic, tribal, "swamp" of a culture that I don't see how it could possibly be changed without first draining it completely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In other words, police act like laws don't apply to them because they _don 't_ (not in some "that's what it feels like" sense, but as a matter of precedent and court finding). See starting at 3 here [https://threader.app/thread/1266053291684827138](https://threader.app/thread/1266053291684827138) , and the linked [https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa- poli...](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-police- immunity-scotus) .

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't want to excuse the abuses but I think in a sense the cops are the victims of bad politics and management. Obviously shooting innocent people is not acceptable but on the other hand they are being thrown into a bad situation and don't get much help coping with that. I know a guy (very nice guy) who started as a cop two years ago. Since then he had to shoot somebody in the leg who attacked him with a knife, had to deal with a teenage girl hanging herself, lots of domestic violence and a lot of other really bad stuff that's very tough to deal with. They don't get any psychological counseling so a lot of the old-timers are either alcoholics or have some other kind of psychological damage.

In the end politics needs to have the courage to address the underfunding and also address the training and management situation. They don't want to do either because it may cost money so the bad situation just keeps going. Reminds me of the healthcare situation where even the most blatant problems go unaddressed because it's more important to do partisan fighting instead of addressing issues. I think it's well understood that the drug laws are damaging so it would be a good start to clean them up.

</comment><comment><USER19> Call your representatives. Demand qualified immunity (and civil forfeiture) be eliminated.

<comment><USER20> It cannot be eliminated by legislation. It arises from a SCOTUS decision, and can only be undone by them (at least in the broadest sense).

<comment><USER21> This is not true. Only their interpretation of the Constitution cannot be overridden by legislation (requires a constitutional amendment). Here, where the Court is interpreting a federal statue, namely 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Congress could in fact change the law to make it clear that the qualified immunity defense the Court made up does not apply.

<comment><USER20> This doesn't appear necessarily correct to me. The statute provides the basis for a suit based on deprivation of rights. SCOTUS determined that (potentially independently of any language in the statute) QI exists for various classes of government officials.

Now, if SCOTUS's QI theory is based on the text of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 then certainly the legislature could change/update/replace the statute with something worded differently.

But it isn't clear that their decision is based on that (or any other) statute at all. Some interpretations of Harlow vs Fitzgerald seem to point more to the idea that SCOTUS decided that this immunity was derived from other aspects of the totality of the constitution, USC and precedent. Others see it more the way you suggest, which is that SCOTUS concluded that QI existed based on specific statutory language.

Apparently, we don't have to wait _that_ long to find out, since they will be reconsidering it starting tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Citizens should be able to pull some of their tax money away from ineffective police departments to hold them accountable. There could be competing police forces, all run by the government, and the citizens should get to fund the ones they prefer, not unlike charter schools allow parents to fund the schools they prefer, and food stamps allow the poor to buy the food they want from the grocery store they prefer.

<comment><USER13> It rankles me to no end knowing that I'm on the hook financially whenever cops misbehave.

They should have to pay settlements personally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is extremely hard to believe that we live in a lawful society if the keepers of the peace are considered to be above the law.

</comment><comment><USER23> Isn't qualified immunity only for civil suits? Police can still be criminally charged.

Perhaps police aren't charged criminally when they should be, but that doesn't seem to be because of qualified immunity.

Suing over murder is not a great recourse, anyway. You still lost your loved one, and the individual you sue probably can't pay you much.

<comment><USER16> > Perhaps police aren't charged criminally when they should be, but that > doesn't seem to be because of qualified immunity.

But qualified immunity prevents those who _care_ to take recourse from _acting_ to take recourse. That's the issue. The police virtually never bring criminal charges against their own.

> and the individual you sue probably can't pay you much

I'm sure the police department can. They sure can afford military-grade gear.

<comment><USER23> "But qualified immunity prevents those who care to take recourse from acting to take recourse."

If a cop murders someone, we need a way to get them into prison, not a way to sue them (or sue the taxpayers).

More bodycams, more dash cams. Maybe every arrest video should be reviewed by an independent organization even without a complaint. Usually bad behavior starts with little things, and its easier to correct before it escalates.

<comment><USER16> One thing I don't understand is why the taxpayer ends up paying settlements. If I sue the individual, why does his employer (and therefore the employer's funders) pay the settlement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know some examples of organizations that work to change laws like this? Or organizations that work with victims of police brutality to hold perpetrators accountable?

I would like to support changing some of the things about our society that contribute to overreach by police but it is hard to know where to begin

<comment><USER25> It would probably need support from police/ex-police to be truly effective. One of my in-laws was with the highway patrol for over a decade and it's interesting how it changes someone when they're around crime all the time. It does something to the human psyche to be around violent or dishonest people all the time so it might be very difficult to find cops/excops to help reforms because most have probably had their outlook of people/society permanently changed, often for the worse.

<comment><USER26> Right, this is why it's important for police to have other duties in their communities in addition to fighting crime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> TBF, Plato's Republic explicitly states the guardians of the Polis were not subject to the same laws, and refers to the idea that there is no hierarchy as the "noble lie."

<comment><USER28> The "noble lie" was not that there's no hierarchy. It was that there was an oracle that the city would be overthrown if the lowest rank became the guardian or leaders of the city. This would lead the people to always let a person's rank be formed appropriately. Higher rank parents would let their offspring be lower rank, and lower rank parents would push their offspring to the higher rank, as would the rest of society. Because they would all fear the city being overthrown.

<comment><USER27> And here we are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Related ongoing thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371537)

</comment><comment><USER30> Related, from earlier today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371537)

</comment><comment><USER31> Would military like training help? Drilling events, having high quality roleplay? It's not like Nasa flies to space without drilling everything.

<comment><USER4> Help with what? Keep cops in shape? Absolutely. Make cops more compassionate? Possibly not (not sure). Would it help to hold criminal cops accountable? No relation to military training.

<comment><USER31> I guess more towards predictable and within expectations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't know about the "because" part, I think the job attracts tough guys and racists (not saying all cops are bad)

</comment><comment><USER33> It's entirely naïve to believe that an apartheid for the primary benefit of the wealthy can or will ever be reformed from within. Citizens' United, "campaign finance reform", lack of action on climate change, and many, many other examples of the corrupting influences of the very rich will preclude significant change because the status quo is how the aristocracy prefers it. Voting/media-driven popularity contests masquerading as elections without exit polls, protests, petitions, and nibbling around the periphery on small issues like QI or as Rachel Maddow doesn't do a damn bit of good because the bigger problem is who's in control: it's not We The People.

If a citizen really wanted change, voting, running for office, looting, and peaceful protests with prayer sticks aren't the answer. There is no reforming a system that has no mechanism for reforming pervasive corruption within and above it! Therefore and unfortunately, the rich have left us with no other answer other than focused, strategic rebellion, and overthrow of their greedy, vampiric apartheid that too many people are blind to because it benefits them. _Queue predictable pearl-clutchers and naysayers_

</comment><comment><USER34> Oh, so Trump's supreme court gets to decide this? Yeah, in suuuuuuper confident this will go well.

<comment><USER35> Why do I get the feeling you're not super familiar with the Supreme Court?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Maybe qualified immunity needs to be reduced in scope, but what is the alternative? Without something like it, police might otherwise be held liable for something like having to taser a violent person, only they hit their head on the way down?

<comment><USER37> In the current climate in the US, there will be lawyers eager to find any possible grounds to file a lawsuit for stupendous amounts because the cop looked at someone wrong, and hurt their fragile self-esteem (I exaggerate, slightly). That's probably going to make an environment where police cannot operate effectively. Yes, they'd be careful not to step across the line. But they'd have to give no grounds for a lawyer looking for a payday to even be able to _claim_ that they had stepped across the line.

The current abuses are horrible. But cops fearful of their own shadow is not a better outcome for society.

<comment><USER4> You can already do that right now. You can already file a lawsuit for a stupendous amounts because the cop looked at you the wrong way. Would the cop get prosecuted? No. Losing qualified immunity doesn't mean that cops will automatically be at fault for anything you desire. The laws would still exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If your are angry about injustice it is wrong to be angry against police and courts enforcing wrong laws.

Demand action from politicians to change those laws (e.g. remove qualified immunity, etc). While protesting is important, engaging with your representatives and VOTING is very important too.

<comment><USER39> Gerrymandering, mass surveillance, oligarch-owned news media that works in conjunction with the state. VOTING doesn't do much. No confidence. They are dismissed.</comment></comment>


We Need More Autopsies, to Help Save the Living - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/we-need-more-autopsies-to-help-save-the-living

<comment><USER2> "Not really; not always; and sometimes not even with causes of death you'd think would show up easily in a good scan. Doctors take far too much confidence in scan results, feeling they see everything with certainty. They don't. As a Florida coroner told me a few years ago, "We get this all the time. The doctors get our report and call and say, 'But there can't be a lacerated aorta. We did a whole set of scans.'"

I would note that _postmortem_ scans, done once the patient is deceased, can be substantially higher fidelity, because there is no concern about radiation exposure in X-ray tomography of arbitrary contrast and number of slices, and after that metal bits can be removed at will for MRI of arbitrary strength, duration, and confinement on a nonmoving subject. Blood tests can be run in standard panels. DNA tests can reveal CoD correlations.

All of this, streamlined, without a surgical autopsy & reporting being performed, seems like a tractable middle ground.

<comment><USER3> Wow, that would be an incredible source of data and a boon to the world. Imagine if it were 1) required by all deaths, and 2) freely released to researchers (for research purposes).

<comment><USER4> Even better if it included doctors' notes, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment before death.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Discrepancies between clinical and autopsy diagnosis and the value of post mortem histology; a meta-analysis and review" [http://www.pathkids.com/autopsy/hasleton%20on%20discrepancie...](http://www.pathkids.com/autopsy/hasleton%20on%20discrepancies.pdf) , Roulson et al 2005 (excerpts: [https://plus.google.com/103530621949492999968/posts/e983tqSE...](https://plus.google.com/103530621949492999968/posts/e983tqSEHYE) )

</comment><comment><USER6> I find this thought provoking. When my father-in-law died, the coroner declined to do an autopsy as he was over 70. Essentially, for anyone old enough, an autopsy is considered unnecessary as death isn't all that unlikely. In some respects, that is a sensible position. However, my father-in-law's death was slightly mysterious (in the medical sense; no suspicion of foul play) as he was extremely healthy and HIS father is still alive at 100.

<comment><USER7> The coroner may have decided it was better for the family's closure to let it go. Particularly if a physician had already signed the death certificate.

<comment><USER6> No, the decision was based entirely on his age (and standard department policy); the coroner was not subtle about it. He died at home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Statistically, there is no reason to autopsy all deaths or even most of them and to do so would be a fantastic waste of resources. A random sampling would suffice. What we do now is probably not random, and not sure it ever could be given the need to defer to family wishes, religious requirements, etc. in cases where no foul play is suspected.

</comment><comment><USER9> "In the United States, we usually don't autopsy people unless the cause of death is mysterious or foul play is suspected."

In any case, health insurance doesn't cover autopsy. Turns out its classified as postmortem to deny insurance coverage. there was an hour long special on NPR sometime in 2014.

<comment><USER10> Why _should_ health insurance cover autopsy?

Given no chance of "recovery" from the condition, there's no health interest to the subscriber, right?

<comment><USER11> Not to the subscriber that has passed, but insurance companies may benefit from the knowledge acquired from autopsies. Analysis could reveal that if the company covered some drug/procedure, the overall usage rate per subscribe decreases, saving them money in the long run.

<comment><USER12> In an amoral economic sense, insurance companies don't profit by helping people eke out their problem-prone later years, versus helping generally- healthy people avoid death and stay customers.

There are probably scenarios where their best-case scenario is to say: "Oh well, I guess it was his time to go" and move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm donating my body to science. I don't see much use in having a death ceremony involving my body. Will probably be much cheaper for my family too.

<comment><USER14> Your family will likely want ceremonies to help them grieve and deal with your loss. Maybe just bury an empty casket.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _" In fact, we [USA] autopsy less than 5 percent of all deaths."_

Coming from a country (Finland) where about 25% of all deaths are autopsied, this was a surprise, that not all developed countries have a similar level.

</comment><comment><USER17> How do I _prevent_ an autopsy from being performed on me?

As a cryonicist, I find what is being advocated for very scary...

<comment><USER18> It is no longer "you" when your body is dead.

<comment><USER19> You brain still has all of "you" when you're legally dead though, at least for a few hours, probably longer if cooled properly. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information- theoretic_death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> former pathology resident here- disagree. The main reason we do fewer autopsies is because of better diagnostics while the patient is alive. The numbers they provide for significant changes in diagnosis based on autopsy seem pretty high (based only on my own experience). Even the examples they pick for the article are kind of lame- it wasn't St. louis encephalitis, it was west nile! Um...so? Do we have a treatment now for West Nile? Would they have done something different knowing that it was west nile (honestly I don't know; I've been out of the medical biz for years)

<comment><USER16> > The main reason we do fewer autopsies is because of better diagnostics while > the patient is alive.

The article claims that _" About 15 to 30 percent of the time, the diagnoses at time of death are wrong"_.

<comment><USER20> Maybe, I haven't read the study, but there is a huge selective pressure here. That is, these days you tend to order autopsies only when there was something mysterious about the death.

<comment><USER21> > Maybe, I haven't read the study

I don't get that. If you haven't read the study, how can you comment on it?

I understand that you'd have your opinion canned and ready in the normal case but this study supposedly moves the needle and I'd be very interested on what it does to your position _after_ you read the study, but without that it's as if you are rejecting out of hand any evidence the study might provide.

<comment><USER20> I can comment based on my observation (lately shared by many) that most of the medical literature is bunk and my experience participating in more than 100 autopsies which tells me that 30% is absurdly high, 15% is too high and the range reported is bizarrely large. In those over 100 autopsies I recall only two surprises. Mostly we learned nothing the clinicians didn't know. Occasionally we found something unknown that wouldn't have altered treatment or course. My experience was that the autopsies were overwhelmingly uninformative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Load of BS!

This means we need more people dead (considering autopsy is done on every body), so that we get a chance to look at more bodies and hopefully reduce the death rate in the future!!??. Is it not same as having less people die now?

<comment><USER23> From the article, which you apparently didn't read:

 _In the United States, we usually don't autopsy people unless the cause of death is mysterious or foul play is suspected. In fact, we autopsy less than 5 percent of all deaths._

<comment><USER22> From my comment, which you apparently didn't read:

> considering autopsy is done on every body

what I meant was, even if every body is autopsied, it wouldn't make sense

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The United States is quite large. Even 1 out of 50 is still a very large number. We have plenty of opportunities to learn everything necessary.

<comment><USER25> If that 1 out of 50 was picked by random, then that _might_ be correct, but the article makes it seem as though that isn't the case.

Since most of these autopsies are conducted when foul play is suspected or when the cause of death is unknown, that doesn't help doctors improve in the cases where they thought they knew the cause of death but were wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I understand that there are 1400 different brands of over-the-counter medication that contain acetaminophen.

That's what destroyed my father's liver.

<comment><USER26> Is there some rational reason you downvoted this?

He was taking tylenol for neuralgia. It harmed his liver so bad he had severe jaundice. He was barely able to walk and was completely unable to speak.

He died at the age of 68.

<comment><USER27> Maybe because it's completely off topic?

<comment><USER7> It isn't really off-topic, but he didn't show the connection. I'm starting to think a lot of what gets perceived as trolling is people trying to make a contribution but failing to show the connection from where the group is to where they are. Then the group comes down hard and then the "troll" gets defensive.

<comment><USER28> Thank you for taking the time to state this. I read what you wrote, then what OP wrote, and realized that you were very correct in my case. Have an upvote for both of you :).

@Michael - I suspect the downvoting is a reaction to your tone. The certainty with which you prevented your statement, along with its (on-the-surface) appearance of being unrelated to the conversation made it appear as if you had an axe to grind. The downvotes (I hope) were a (misguided) attempt to rectify this behavior.

I bet that a lot of people who downvoted you would have supported your comment if your words were changed a little so the tone came across more clearly. Something like, "I wish there had been an autopsy done on my father, who died of renal failure. He had been advised to take XYZ medication, much of which contained acetaminophen. His autopsy could have supported science that brought awareness of cumulative acetaminophen ingestion."

I am sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing your experience -- it led me to research acetaminophen toxicity, where I found out that the deaths caused may be greatly underreported due to a variety of factors. ([http://www.propublica.org/article/tylenol-mcneil-fda- behind-...](http://www.propublica.org/article/tylenol-mcneil-fda-behind-the- numbers))

Better post-mortem data from autopsies in cases like your fathers would go a long ways towards understanding the scope of the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Doctors, meanwhile, learned humility. If you're a doctor, it's one thing to know, as an abstract fact, that 10 or 20 percent of patients who seemed to die of heart attack actually died from pulmonary embolism. It is quite another to have a pathologist dissect one of your patients and tell you No, this woman you took care for 25 years, and whose husband you pass on the street each day, did not die of heart attack; she died of a pulmonary embolism, and that's probably why she complained of shortness of breath when you examined her three months ago. An angiogram might have spotted it."

If we increase the rate of autopsies, the higher degree of accountability for doctors will lead to higher stress levels in the profession. The rate of suicide in physicians is already far above average. The US should be doing more autopsies, but we should increase them in a way that supports the profession, rather than giving our culture another way to point fingers at doctors and say "your mistake killed that person".

<comment><USER14> In software development and system administration - automation, variables, and copy-paste (instead of retyping) can be used to remove the possibility for human error to occur. Instead of seeing the number "0x80007003" and accidentally retyping it as "0x80070003", we can just copy it, and paste it into the other system. Or have the systems talk to each other and take us out of the loop.

How do we remove opportunities for human error in medicine and health care?

<comment><USER30> I worked for a medical software company for a couple of years a little while ago. One of the major ingredients in the mandatory corporate beverage was the concept of "patient safety".

As a severe simplification, you can think of the transition from older medical processes to newer ones as like pulling all the string parameters, string parsing, and string building out of old code and replacing it with strictly typed data. In doing so, you remove all errors generated by improperly formatted strings.

That, and barcoding every damned thing in the hospital.

For instance, you barcode the patient's wrist tag, and you barcode everything going out of the hospital pharmacy. When the nurses go into a room to administer a patient's meds, they scan the patient, and scan the medication. The scanner bleeps either a "yes, proceed" or a "WHOA WHOA WHOA, RIGHT THERE! WRONG MED OR WRONG PATIENT!"

That last measure alone saves thousands of lives every year.[0]

[0] This statistic is entirely made up, but sounds about right.[1]

[1] Fine. Sort through it yourself. This ought to get you started:

[https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=ZQ6VX_oAAAAJ&citation_for_view=ZQ6VX_oAAAAJ:d1gkVwhDpl0C)

[https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=Q3v-FPAAAAAJ&citation_for_view=Q3v-FPAAAAAJ:u-x6o8ySG0sC)</comment></comment></comment>


I've never had a goal – Signal v. Noise - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/ive-never-had-a-goal-c89219aedddf#.17omv9xb0 <comment><USER2> So...objectives are different than goals? How do you get anything done? Goal here must mean something different than just the end result of a task.</comment>


Go 1.1 performance improvements, part 3 - <AUTHOR> http://dave.cheney.net/2013/05/28/go-11-performance-improvements-part-3 <comment><USER2> Nice to see work on ARM. I wish we had something as powerful for dealing with concurrency in iOS as golang. Immutables and the SDK get you pretty far, but not quite as elegant. (If I am wrong please tell me)

<comment><USER3> Have you tried libdispatch (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch>)? It's pretty darn powerful.

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see a side by side comparison of this to Go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> i like green.</comment>


Show HN: Hacker News in your system tray - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/captn3m0/hackertray/ <comment><USER2> This is a great hack, but a terribly dangerous idea. I have trouble enough avoiding HN when I open a browser... now the thing is looming over me at all times. Sorry, I don't have the willpower for this.

<comment><USER3> I'm going to try this, I think it will actually HELP. I always find myself mindlessly ctrl+t and typing news..<enter> when I open a new browser window.

<comment><USER4> If you have to type "news", you're better off than I am. "n" does it for me.

<comment><USER3> You're right, just tested. "n" gets it. I probably get to "ne" or "new" before realizing it. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for targeting Linux! I'd rather expected MacOS but you truly surprised me. I'm gonna try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, this is inspired by Hacker Bar [1], which launched a couple days back as a Mac-only app.

[1]: [http://hackerbarapp.com/](http://hackerbarapp.com/)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the link to my app and for citing it as inspiration!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> __Update __: If the app isn 't starting any more because of a JSON error, its because the API I am using just crossed its Rate Limit. ([https://github.com/cheeaun/node-hnapi](https://github.com/cheeaun/node- hnapi)). I'm working to fix it as soon as I can.

<comment><USER7> You should think about setting up a local instance of node-hnapi and using it instead of a remote one.

<comment><AUTHOR> @cheeaun promised me on twitter that the rate limit is per-IP, and I've since implemented fallback servers (same as hackerweb) so this shouldn't be an issue any more. Plus setting up a local instance would make things unnecessarily complicated (nodejs and all that)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And, at the time of commenting, this link can be found right below the link to "How Software Companies Die".

</comment><comment><USER9> I hope there are options to follow /newest. There are many great stories that never make it to the front page. But I have to (lightly) disagree with swalsh's apprehension. This will quadruple the time spent on my actual work since I can quickly scan the headlines and go back without having to open a window.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have exams tomorrow! But screw it, I'm gonna try this out

</comment><comment><USER11> Thought it wouldn't work for me out until I saw someone comment "Whynot for Windows?" Oh it's for Linux then? Nice, I guess I should check it out.

This was one of the most painless installs ever, just pip it and run it. Done! And of course open source on Github. Great job, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER12> Thanks for open sourcing it. It'd be neat to replicate this idea for other sites I might frequent. I'm already having enough trouble trying to stay away from HN on the browser. Heh.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking about creating a generic version of this that checks on a single RSS feed for you.

<comment><USER12> Hey, that'd be really awesome. I'll be checking your github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Distraction at your fingertips.

</comment><comment><USER14> neat, but can i have a windows version? :P

maybe an installer instead of the standard linux way of forcing you to know things you don't really need to know?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on a windows version based on the excellent node-webkit [1]. I'm still not sure on how much effort I'll put in packaging it.

[1]: [https://github.com/rogerwang/node- webkit/](https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/)

<comment><USER14> no worries. was just an off the cuff remark. there are already solutions for this. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seems great/dangerous in equal measure.

</comment><comment><USER16> haha everyone is commenting like they have actual work to do

<comment><USER3> Maybe HN is some sort of social experiment/prank on information gobblers who also happen to be more prone to ADD ;((

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there any such thing for Windows?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am thinking of using node-webkit to package cheeaun's hackerwebapp[1] into the system tray for Windows. Similar to [2] for Mac.

[1]: [http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)

[2]: [http://www.guidefreitas.com/hacker-news-menu-tab- app](http://www.guidefreitas.com/hacker-news-menu-tab-app)

EDIT: Popping up an entire webview from Tray doesn't seem to be easy. But creating a menu is very easy. I might do a simple clone of hackertray to Windows :)

<comment><USER17> That sounds cool! I agree that popping up an entire webview and that too on windows would be difficult. Waiting for hackertray for windows!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> good new and bad new, the good one is: this is very great hack! bad one is that make me addicted to HN, haha

</comment><comment><USER19> Well, I think now there must be an in app way to enable Noprocrast or we are all doomed:)

</comment><comment><USER20> Thank god, a way for me to read Hacker News more often throughout the day. ;)</comment>


Would you rent out your room for a few hours? This YC startup is counting on it - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/13/would-you-rent-out-your-living-room-for-a-few-hours-this-startup-is-counting-on-it/ <comment><USER2> Interesting concept and business model. Would love a follow up article in a few months!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure they are aware of how this is going to end.</comment>


Hackers exploit Microsoft online store - <AUTHOR> http://www.firstpost.com/india/microsoft-store-india-hacked-login-ids-passwords-stolen-210890.html

<comment><USER2> Posted about it last night - not much activity though. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3582393></comment>


The LeBron Factor: Who Drives Wine Trends Today - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lebron-factor-who-drives-wine-trends-today-11552053545 <comment><AUTHOR> content here: [https://www.outline.com/6SsN3G](https://www.outline.com/6SsN3G)</comment>


Giant digital fabrication CNC - <AUTHOR> http://uemfab.blog.com/2012/05/08/over-100-metres-reach-lets-cnc-machine/

<comment><USER2> Forget wind turbines -- when can we use this for architectural purposes?

<comment><USER3> Machine time for something this big is very expensive: that's why it's used for making molds, which is a fabrication technology that scales up very easily; unlike CNC machining, which doesn't scale at all.

Additionally, surface finish with ±0.2mm X/Y is going to be pretty poor. It won't produce finished parts, you'll need to sand/grind it, or coat it with fiberglass and sand that. It also doesn't mention deflection under load, or feedrate through anything tougher than foam plastic.

<comment><USER4> which part of any of that prevents it from being used for architectural purposes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If Good Sir Jony Ives at Apple sees this, he's going to trip his knight mind out.</comment>


Want More Women In Your Software Company? It Starts With One - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3008216/tracking/minding-gap-how-your-company-can-woo-female-coders

<comment><USER2> This: «Second person thought is first person thought. It is thought of the self-conscious.»

Read: Self-consciousness ([http://books.google.com/books?id=imqGN3b_K5IC&pg=PA194&lpg=P...](http://books.google.com/books?id=imqGN3b_K5IC&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=sebastian+rodl+%22you+and+i%22&source=bl&ots=dgivVNysIN&sig=qGa2Yv6hi5NGifHZLpawqQtf6dM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lvsnUrrfDcnKsASn- YDoDg&ved=0CE8Q6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=sebastian%20rodl%20%22you%20and%20i%22&f=false)).

The generalization here is that in order to increase the ranks of women, minorities, aliens, etc., etc., one must increase the potential for second person thought of persons of that kind. — This is why "awareness raising" is crucial to any endeavor toward social expansion.

By hiring more women, for instance, a company increases the statistical rate at which men, when using "you"-utterances, have first-person thoughts which involve the conceptual space of a woman second-person thought (which is first- person thought — though _considerating_ male consciousness). And vice versa.

From Georges Bataille's L'ANUS SOLAIRE:

«Without knowing it, he suffers from the mental darkness that keeps him from screaming that he himself is the girl who forgets his presence while shuddering in his arms.»

«A man who finds himself among others is irritated because he does not know why he is not one of the others.»

These are applications of Fregean thought.

Also see: "Reliably Biased: The Role of Listener Expectation in the Perception of Second Language Speech" ([http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lang.12014/abstra...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lang.12014/abstract)).</comment>


Name This Fallacy - <AUTHOR> https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/12/name-this-fallacy/ <comment><USER2> I'm unsure what to think of this piece. I suspect that Gelman is right that there is a bias here. However, I also think most of us don't practice enough. I'll use writing, though other examples would serve equally well.

I don't write that well, but my best writing is much better than my worst. When I write badly, I don't think it's because writing is hard, but because I didn't put in the effort.

We have the Joel test for software companies. Scoring high doesn't make you world class, but scoring 0 is a bad sign. Think of the analogous test for writing. Do you read your work out loud? Do you solicit feedback for clarity? Do you look for your weaknesses as a writer? How much editing do you do?

</comment><comment><USER3> Kind of tangential, but does anyone know how long has andrewgelman.com been redirecting to statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu? I have been reading Gelman's blog (maybe it's unfair to call it Gelman's blog since it also has posts by other people) off and on for years. I've never noticed the address bar changing.

<comment><USER3> In case anyone cares, I found my own answer: [https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/01/11/new- blog-h...](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/01/11/new-blog- hosting/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure if disdain is not a good word. Not being interested enough in something, not finding it worthy of pursuit, that could qualify as a form of disdain.</comment>


New IPython release drops Python 2.7 support - <AUTHOR> http://ipython.readthedocs.io/en/stable/whatsnew/version6.html <comment><USER2> The 5.x fixed a lot of my UX quibbles with the completion menu, and made syntax highlighting, and now they're further improving the completion quality and the menu. I'm so excited!

<comment><USER3> And you just can't hide it.

<comment><USER4> It's a shame that humorous comments are so consistently downvoted here. Are we all supposed to be post-laughter now or something?

<comment><USER5> Low-content jokes never did particularly well on HN. Like it or loathe it, it's been a cultural feature here for years.

<comment><USER4> I don't remember it being this bad maybe ~8 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use Juypter and the iPython nearly every day. The new autocomplete looks extremely promising. If you are running Python 2.7 it may not be a big deal to just use iPython 5.x though.

The two major uses I have are prototyping nearly any coding project that requires python and teaching myself data analysis. This has saved me hours if not days due to the fact that the feedback loop is so fast. When I code in other languages I desire the iPython interface.

<comment><USER7> >When I code in other languages I desire the iPython interface.

It's not specifically IPython, but Jupyter does support many other languages through kernels!

[https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter/wiki/Jupyter- kernels](https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter/wiki/Jupyter-kernels)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A comment from a beginner python user -- but I need to rant ...

I've been doing a bit of python the last few weeks for some image processing/computer vision tasks (using opencv and numpy).

I have to say, all together it's a pretty miserable developer experience.

Python is incredibly slow - forcing pretty much all computation no matter how trivial into contortions via numpy incantations so that the inner loops can run in native extensions -- these Incantations have a lot of implicit not well documented magic. Miss some details in the behavior of the magic and suddenly you have a major 10x slowdown -- but good luck finding where. I would kill for an easy to use tool like xcodes Time Profiler ...

API usage errors (even those where invariants are checked at runtime) are ridiculously under informative -- opencv for example does quite a bit of runtime sanity checking on the shape and type of arguments to its methods -- but somehow even simple details as to which parameter is the cause of the error don't get reported in the stack trace severely increasing the cognitive load required to identify the mismatch -- not fun when multiple arguments to an API are the result of a chain of numpy magic data munging. This may be an opencv complaint more than python (aside: opencv is pretty terrible.)

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong with python but I find the majority of my code to be sort of menial data munging -- and I haven't figured out good patterns to organize this munging in any sensical way --with a static language d.r.y patterns to centralize such plumbing operations have the awesome effect of moving invariants into reasonable places -- in python without any ability to organjze guarantees, as the code base evolves I find myself needing to repeatedly check data shapes/types -- there doesn't seem to be an obviously useful way to organize verification of data types as the necessary invariants become apparent. These issues are compounded by the fact that refactoring is an enormous pain in the ass!

I feel like all my python code is throwaway code. Maybe that's what I'm missing -- I need to just accept that all the python numeric code I write is pure one-off junk, embrace copy paste and never try to reuse any of it ...

Sorry for the rant! I remember loving dynamic languages when I first discovered them - but right now, I really miss c++ (or even better swift).

I can't imagine the number of hours wasted because of these overly dynamic tools -- and there is simply no decreasing that lost time in the future -- as these languages grow if the house of cards ecosystems they sit atop grow and motivates more use then ever more developer hours will be lost to avoidable triviality ...

<comment><USER9> The idea of using Python for high performance numerical work is daft. The whole scientific Python thing revolves around the fact that Python is an excellent low boilerplate research and prototyping language with possible production uses where performance isn't critical. Unfortunately this lead to a lot of software in this area being developed for it. You wouldn't be doing performance critical production stuff with R or Matlab? I'm afraid that for serious numbers crunching nothing can truly replace compiled, statically typed languages and additionally you can't rely on GPGPU abstractions without fully understanding the underlying mechanisms and I'm pretty sure that the same is true for NumPy. Your problem are your expectations.

<comment><USER10> There's "not for performance-critical use", and then there's "why is it gobbling up all the RAM (~10GB) and make it impossible for me to do anything, when the entire data I fed it is several hundred MB."

Python frequently saunters into the second territory. Well, I guess there are tools available to profile memory usage and stuff, but if I had to spend that much effort tracking down memory issues, I might as well rewrite it in C++. (It doesn't help (or it helps?) that I'm much more comfortable with C++ than Python. YMMV.)

<comment><USER11> There are some easy to avoid pathological cases such as concatenating numpy arrays in a loop.

Take this gem from a well known course:

       np.concatenate([x.next() for i in range(x.nb)])

That looks pretty innocent but it can eat up your memory in an eyeblink if the input is large enough. That's the sort of pitfall that a lot of python code suffers from because the abstractions are _just_ nice enough to make you believe this will work without penalty and without knowing how it is implemented under the hood you're suddenly out a few gigs of ram.

<comment><USER12> If np.concatenate accepts any iterable, removing the brackets is what you want to do there.

<comment><USER13> That won't help. Concatenate needs to know the total length up front. It will evaluate all the input items at once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I understand the notebook machinery itself is running on Python 3, but can I still launch a Python 2.7 kernel? I am still working with Python 2-only libraries at the moment.

<comment><USER15> Yes you can. Kernels are completely independent from the notebook itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It'd be really nice if they followed python3, and named it ipython3. This is just going to confuse install processes if I now have to install "ipython<6".

<comment><USER17> That's not necessarily a Python thing, but a Linux distribution thing or whichever package manager or installer you are using. I like all my Python 3+ installs just called python, personally.

<comment><USER18> It _is_ a Python thing, see [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/). And changing the definition of `python` is just going to cause issues again once Python 4 eventually comes around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, I thought that this would never happen.

</comment><comment><USER20> I personally think they should have just declared Python 3 to be a new language, inspired by python 2, like many other competing new-pythons.

Instead, they didn't play fair, and gave themselves an unfair advantage.

<comment><USER21> Damn that Python team, giving themselves an unfair advantage in developing Python.

Seriously, what am I reading here?

<comment><USER22> Maybe this is a joke, and then I'd say it's pretty neat one. I mean, just look at that, what other language got a similar problem of that scale! And let's not pretend it all passed and we are happily moving forward: this year (this month, actually) I've seen very prominent NN-course, suggesting Python 2.7 for all assignments and code samples, and quite useful library (also NN-related), supporting 2.7 only. I guess, some of mitsuhiko's (Ronarcher's) developments didn't move to 3.* as well.

So, yeah, IPython dropping 2.7 is pretty huge. Almost like moving to a different language.

<comment><USER23> > I've seen very prominent NN-course, suggesting Python 2.7 for all > assignments and code samples, and quite useful library (also NN-related), > supporting 2.7 only.

Oh, that's plain silly. Isn't the whole point of Python 2.7 to facilitate the transition to Python 3?

<comment><USER22> Silly or not, but it's still very common mindset with scientific-oriented people (who care about ML, econometrics, statistics and such much more than "programming" per se), who form a quite notable category of Python users. Actually, for me they are the reason why I'm still using Python a lot (although I try to stick to 3.x), because for other use-cases, like scripting or web-dev I mostly (but not completely) moved to other languages.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to block sites from Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://anarchogeek.com/2011/09/23/how-to-block-sites-from-hacker-news/

<comment><USER2> The karma of the submitter has no effect on how a story is ranked. Nor I suspect does it affect whether people upvote the story, except when the submitter is one of maybe 100 HN users who are well enough known that their username as submitter makes people pay attention to the story. Plus if we noticed anyone consistently rewriting titles we'd ask them to stop and eventually ban them if they didn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, that's a good point. I assumed poster quality mattered because posts which are highly rated are mostly from posters with high karam. Confusing cause with effect probably.

That said, the quality of the titles matters a lot, and getting some up votes quickly also seems to mater a lot. Users could be bad actors and intentionally do bad titles. They also can try to avoid collect early votes through timing their posts during the weekday morning west coast time. I suspect that hacker news traffic peaks wednesday at lunch time PST.

<comment><USER2> If you were trying to hose a competitor by posting e.g. their blog posts at a slow time like 4 am pacific, they'd have to help you out by publishing their blog posts at that time. In my experience no one does that. Companies wait to publish their posts at good times, and then the links are quickly submitted to HN, either by the company or someone else. So a bad guy would rarely have an opportunity to submit an as-yet unsubmitted link at a slow time.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention that the owner of the site can re-submit on a more favourable hour by appending to the url with things like "/" or "?fromHn=true"

<comment><USER2> When we see those we kill them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The key point is that good stories can get lost in the noise and once lost reviving them is very difficult. Re-posting the story with the same URL just adds a karma point to the original poster but does not get any mention on the "new" page so no-one else gets the chance to review and (possibly) update a good but overlooked post.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do people really care about karma and try to get karma by posting good links? I guess it works too, but 99% of my karma comes from writing smart comments (hopefully), which is quite valuable to the community too (I hope).

<comment> alexis-d The karma may be important if you ask a question (I suppose it works like when you submit a link) : if you ask a question, and if you get lost because you have no "early" upvotes, the question will disappear in the depths of HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I saw your post and was awesome but have little upvotes, then i entered and it was the same but with a lot upvotes, pretty strange . I felt a little sad because you deserve some good upvotes man.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why are the spaces between paragraphs so huge?

<comment><USER8> OP probably uses a standalone program (like MS Word) to author articles, then copies them over to the web CMS which picks up some of the formatting.

EDIT: Damn HN, easy on the down votes. Didn't realize you had to be "right" in order to have a worthwhile comment.

<comment><AUTHOR> No i just have a really crappy WP layout and for some reason i have it set in my CSS to do no whitespace between paragraphs. So the lazy solution, instead of fixing my css, is to do br nbsp br between paragraphs. I know, i should fix it.

<comment><USER8> Ah, that makes sense. But I wouldn't call it a lazy solution. You're doing more work. Edit CSS once vs space & new line every paragraph every post.

To each his own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> get params?

</comment><comment><USER10> Just append a nonsense url parameter to the article URL and you can submit it again.

</comment><comment><USER11> There is an awful lot of interesting content that gets bumped off the "new" page really fast. I think stories that get upvoted on that page should be able to percolate longer before disappearing.</comment>


Show HN: Graphical programming environment for arduino - <AUTHOR> http://blog.minibloq.org/2011_03_01_archive.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Our idea is to make it the best tool to teach Arduino to kids and beginners. Any feedback will be appreciated.</comment>