When That Guy Died on My Show (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/when-that-guy-died-on-my-show/ <comment><USER2> I found this article difficult to follow, mostly because I'm not familiar with the people or event, and it begins with rhetoric assuming the reader is familiar. Here's a list of the "characters".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._I._Rodale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._I._Rodale) who died on the stage of the Dick Cavett Show [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dick_Cavett_Show](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dick_Cavett_Show)

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hamill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hamill) who Cavett was talking to while Rodale died

<comment><USER3> I was a big fan of Dick Cavett's show, it was a higher brow show than the others.

I went looking for his interview of Jimi Hendrix to post which happened during Woodstock but sadly couldn't find it on YouTube. But here's a short clip where he tells Cavett who he thought was the best guitarist in the world.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJxiCZwP_GI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJxiCZwP_GI)

Here's Cavett interviewing John and Yoko Lennon:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kXCnKfdGOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kXCnKfdGOY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is one of those situations where people remember the gist of an event, but they don't clearly remember the exact details.

I was a high school kid living in NYC at the time. I used to watch Cavett on TV all the time. Here's what I remember:

1) this was relatively big news when it happened

2) newscasts covered it. Newspapers covered it.

3) Cavett spoke about it on his show the next day (as he mentions).

4) I saw footage from that show. Did that footage air on the news on the day Rodale died, or did Cavett show some footage the next day? I don't remember, but there clearly was footage of the guy sitting in the chair just before he died.

\-----

So, many people "saw" the event, in the sense that they pieced it all together.

Even when Cavett talks about "the look on your face", that also happened. People might not have seen his face that day, but Cavett was somber the next night when he explained the previous day's events. Many people tuned in for that and I'm not surprised they "remember" it.

All this is well understood. As Wiki claims: _Memory is never a literal recount of past experiences. Rather, it is dependent on the constructive processes present at the time of encoding that are subject to potential errors and distortions._

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

<comment><USER5> I once saw a very drunk woman drive her car at full throttle into the corner of a hotel.

It's like he describes it, snapshots. My brain throttled hard, and locked up at the amount of information there was to process all at once. That can't be right, she just drove into the side of that building. No, she slammed into it. She might have been trying to drive through it? No, that's silly.

But one clear piece is the unmistakable sound of an automatic transmission with the pedal hard to the floor. And the crash, an onomatopoetic word of itself, it sounded like a crash.

It was complicated by the fact that moments ago, I was loading wedding gifts in to a van. Not mine, just helping the Niece after the reception. But what a stark and sudden turn for a day, to witness something like that. What if she had turned her wheel this way or that when entering the parking lot before hitting the building? Would she have gone through me, and right in to the lobby? Would she have missed the building wide and ramped off the escarpment overlooking the Interstate?

And I was just frozen in that moment of time. Slack jawed and wide eyed while I watched by buddy Timmy organize the available bystanders and check on the driver. I believe he shut the ignition off, but I believe that is something he would do, I have no proof that is what actually happened next.

It's weird, the kind of stuff that goes through your head, and you find out about when something like that happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of the Challenger explosion. I'm certain I watched it live in elementary school and when it blew up my teachers had to deal with a bunch of crying 2nd graders. I've read, however that it is highly improbable for that to have occurred due to the launch being tape delayed and CNN being the only station to carry it live. I have enough memories of my classmates crying and the teachers trying to figure out what to say that I'm convinced I saw it. It's likely the same scenario happened as mentioned in this article.

<comment><USER7> If you were in school, it is very possible you did watch it live:

"With Christa McAuliffe set to be the first teacher in space, NASA had arranged a satellite broadcast of the full mission into television sets in many schools, but the general public did not have access to this unless they were one of the then-few people with satellite dishes. What most people recall as a "live broadcast" was actually the taped replay broadcast soon after the event." [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11031097/](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11031097/)

<comment><USER8> Was (too) early in the morning on the east coast, the cold contributed to the failure. By the time we arrived in school in California, it was hours-old news.

<comment><USER9> "The time had come, at 11:38 AM Eastern Standard Time" \- at least look it up.

<comment><USER8> So it was 20 mins old, no need to be an ass about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Similar to the insistence that Sinbad played a genie in a movie called Shazaam when he never did. But people really insisted they saw the movie.

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sinbad-movie- shazaam/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sinbad-movie-shazaam/)

<comment><USER11> I think I have a valid argument for this theory besides people mistaking this with Shaquille O'Neal's 'Kazaam'. In an episode of Nickelodeon's 'All That', Sinbad once played the father of Ishboo (played by Kenan Thompson) 'Sinboo'. And I recall his clothing being very similar to that of a Genie. Can enough people be mistakenly conflating their childhood memories of Sinboo and Kazaam and creating 'Shazaam'..?

<comment><USER12> Also there was a TV show called Shazam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If anyone is looking for a rabbit hole to go down, the memories formed in response to surprising, highly emotional events, that people feel are especially vivid, are called flashbulb memories :).

RE people believing they saw it, even if they couldn't have, an important factor for people's (mis)recollection is what happens after the event.

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

<comment><USER14> I liked how Terry Pratchett mocked this phenomenon:

> He remembered once when he'd been stabbed and would have bled to death if > Sergeant Angua hadn't caught up with him and how, as he lay there, he'd > found himself taking a very intense interest in the pattern of the carpet. > The senses say: we've only got a few minutes, let's record everything, in > every detail... \--The Night Watch

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My favorite part of the article was this memorable quote:

        A man convinced against his
        will,
        Is of the same opinion still.

Cleanly sums up the phenomenon.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is partly about the Mandella Effect -- many people claimed to have seen the episode, but supposedly it never aired.

[https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/07/24/the-mandela- effect/](https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/07/24/the-mandela-effect/)

It's named after Nelson Mandela due to the widespread false belief he died in the 1980's.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't remember the show - but it probably coincided with the global renaming of Berenstein Bears as Berenstain Bears. [1]

[1] [http://www.woodbetween.world/2012/08/the-berenstein-bears- we...](http://www.woodbetween.world/2012/08/the-berenstein-bears-we-are- living-in.html)

<comment><USER18> This often gets mentioned, but its pretty easily explained by the fact the books are for children, Bernstein or Bernstain are both difficult words for the target age group, and the ending stein is far more common a spelling.

<comment><USER19> Yes, but that explanation is a lot less fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Next thing I knew I was holding his wrist, thinking, I don't know anything about what a wrist is supposed to feel like."

</comment><comment><USER21> Last season of xfiles have a funny episode about the stuff you think happened, but didnt :) [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Art_of_Forehead_Swe...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Art_of_Forehead_Sweat)

</comment><comment><USER22> I didn't catch it live, but the school principal announced it over the PA system. It didn't seem as big of a deal to me at the time to warrant a PA announcement, I was in high school at that point.

<comment><USER23> I have to assume you meant this to be a part of the thread about the Challenger explosion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember reading the bit about asking his "is there a doctor in the audience?"

</comment><comment><USER25> I assume the resurgence in interest is due to an earlier submission that showed up this week? ;) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16555592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16555592)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage all your interests, hopes, dreams? - <AUTHOR> I am interested in so many things, and feel a sickening dread that I won't have the time to explore them all. I'm actively resentful of my job for taking me away from the things I want to learn and get good at. When I get home, I'm overwhelmed with possibility, so I always question whether I'm spending time on the right thing. I often don't end up doing anything due to this analysis paralysis.
If you're like me, what do you do? Do you try to whittle down your interests and commit only to a few, accepting that one cannot do everything they want to in life? Do you try to cram them all in somehow? Do you focus on one at a time and trust that, eventually, you will be able to get to them all? Do you quit your job and take a sabbatical year to do a deep dive on all these things, provided you have the means (I don't, necessarily, but could eventually).
This has been causing me quite a lot of stress lately. Thanks HN, for any wisdom you might have. <comment><USER3> Why do you feel a sickening dread that you won't have time to explore them all?

You won't. That's a fact.

We are all limited beings. You can do anything, but you can't do everything.

Bill gates didn't choose polio eradication because it was the most intellectually interesting, or the most profitable, or the most trendy - <USER2> chose it because he assessed all the options and found a goal that was challenging but achievable.

You need to do the same. It's ok to be interested and open minded about other areas, and it's ok to spend time on them, but don't let analysis paralyse you, pick a few challenging stretch goals and go for it

</comment><comment><USER4> One thing I regret is not taking a year off before kids to explore such things or one thing in depth. Without kids its quite affordable you can move anywhere in the world and live frugally. Have all day and all mental energy to explore with time to balance this with fitness/socializing/ meditation etc.

Hardest thing is the social taboo. You'd be spending a year working away for no income and no recognition. Or at least nothing guaranteed. That would be seen as madness (or baaaaa-d) by the masses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I considered taking six months off and renting a cheap apartment somewhere in Spain. It's still a possibility, but the social taboo is definitely a strong force. Met with questions like, 'but what about your career?', 'what will you do for income?', 'health insurance?', etc., all seem to have the effect of putting me back in my dutiful, rule-abiding place. Sigh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I have found helpful when feeling paralyzed by options is to create more easily digestible goals. Sure you may be not be able to do everything, but what can you do _now_? Even if you don't have much free time, if you're able to hit your bite-sized goals, the feeling of progress is what can help you feel motivated.

Let's say you're a developer interested in design, and you have a goal of creating the best-in-class application for whatever, but you're not too knowledgable about the design process. Instead of diving into the deep end of UX patterns, usability studies, tests, validation, platform-specific do's and don'ts etc. — start by picking apart your favorite app, and really dig into what makes the UX great, or what doesn't, think really deeply about the problems they're trying to solve and why. Take lots of notes.

Don't have time for that? Let's break the goal down further, and start by thinking about what your top 5 best-in-class apps are and why you think they're great. This can be as high-level or as deep as you want, so long as you're hitting an achievable self-made goal on a regular basis to keep you going.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a few broad interests/hopes/dreams that I tend to juggle, as is the case for most people.

I also have this note in my phone called "pipe dreams", in which, whenever I fantasize or think about something that's plausible while simultaneously kinda crazy/life-changing, I write it down. I occasionally visit it when I'm feeling uninspired or bored, and this usually results in me working on something that incrementally reaches towards one of those "pipe dreams".

<comment><AUTHOR> Reminds me of this practice of Derek Sivers - creating a "Possible Futures" folder on his desktop [0]. I have started to do the same, I think just the practice of writing them down helps with the anxieties of never being able to tend to them all.

[https://sivers.org/futures](https://sivers.org/futures)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went through something similar. I started keeping a journal. Also start a personal wiki, I use vimwiki and it's the best habit I ever developed -- it really helps to organize your thinking, you will also understand yourself better. Don't take a sabbatical unless you have an interest that consumes you, given the state your in you won't get anything done -- at best it will let you wander into something you decide on and at worst it will be a temporary escape.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've journaled off and on but haven't been able to keep up the habit. I am going to give the personal wiki a shot, I think it's a great idea. I feel overwhelmed with input, like I have no way to control or systematize it, this may be a solution. Thank you!

<comment><USER7> You use a wiki in a different way than a journal -- journal entries you write once and maybe read again. You can iteratively prune and refine a wiki over time.</comment></comment></comment>


The student who discovered water on Mars says it was a 'lucky accident' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34390462/the-student-who-discovered-water-on-mars-says-it-was-a-lucky-accident <comment><USER2> Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés. (In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.)

\- Louis Pasteur ([https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur))

</comment><comment><USER3> It didn't happen by accident, but rather because he "(looks) at both visible light and infrared light and based on how different materials absorb light, (he) can compare that with the laboratory data and make some inference about what kind of materials are present.", and before that because he learned the required stuff to end up doing this.

<comment><USER4> This is the kind of thing that ends up being just another 'don't have to try too hard to succeed' story. It's like Einstein being bad at math.

People like to just believe that brilliance is only possible at random, and nothing they can do will help, unless they get lucky.

It's the same reason the lottery still exists.

<comment><USER5> Lottery exists because for some people the thought of being rich is more enticing than the reality of owning an extra buck.

<comment><USER6> The lottery still exists because there are a lot of people who are bad at statistics.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure that that is why.

Just because someone realizes that the expected value of their purchase is negative to being almost the same as the cost, doesn't mean that they can't make the purchase.

Whether it makes sense depends on their utility function.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not clear what the accident was. (?)

It's also not clear why they included a picture of him playing guitar with a caption about his band...

<comment><USER9> _> It's also not clear why they included a picture of him playing guitar with a caption about his band..._

There is a bit of a push at the moment, and has been for a while, to show that scientists and other technical types are normal people too, not just the stereotype anal retentive hyper-dedicated socially disconnected Asperger afflicted geniuses. You'll often see a little bit of information about the people in question that is ultimately completely irrelevant to the science/tech being discussed.

If it does help break down the stereotype a bit then it is a good thing: many kids are put off science in part because of such things.

<comment><USER10> Yea, seems to be going in the opposite direction. Pop culture like tv shows Big Bang Theory and Silicon Valley are showing that it's actually cool to be geeky or into tech and startups.

<comment><USER11> > Big Bang Theory

> it's actually cool to be geeky or into tech

Is this satire?

<comment><USER12> You should know by now that all of HN is a parody of itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I haven't been following this too closely. Are the salt streaks where the water is too? Are we actually seeing the water itself in these images or not?

<comment><USER14> Yes, the water is extremely salty (which is why it's not frozen solid) and when it evaporates, it leaves visible salt deposits.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for your reply. I've seen an animated image of these salt deposits forming online. It's my understanding these images were taken over a period of several months. Now we know what to look for, would it be possible to watch this happen in real time, or not? Would there be any benefit of a geostationary satellite that just observed the same spot over a long period of time?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >"Using a Nasa instrument called Crism, Lujendra and his team were able to tell that these 'streaks' are covered with salts."

Hard to believe that an undergraduate at the time would have "his team". He was probably the part of a larger team that gave the undergrads the opportunity to look at the images generated by the equipment, and he was the student who found the evidence. Not saying that he shouldn't be given credit.

<comment><USER16> I took that to mean "his team" as in "the team he was part of" as opposed to "the team that he led".</comment></comment>


Whats New in Emacs 24 - <AUTHOR> http://sachachua.com/blog/2010/12/whats-new-in-emacs-24/

<comment><USER2> Emacs is one of those software systems I'm really grateful for. My life is significantly better because I'm in a world where it exists - "better" meaning more joyful, more positively productive, and more enabled to be of service (since I use it for writing articles and opensource software, etc. Not to mention the code behind my company, so it's even helping me create jobs.)

<comment><USER3> I really, really want to use Emacs. I like the ideas, I like the addons, I like the lispiness. What I can't get over, though, is the pinky contortions and multiple chords required to accomplish things in the editor itself.

I'm not a big fan of vimscript, and the addons seem more clunky, but being able to hit a single key, rather than a chord, or series of chords, to accomplish the basic text manipulations, makes it really hard for me to stop using vim and use emacs for more than a few days.

<comment><USER2> I can understand! I actually also use vim a whole lot, which is absolutely wonderful as well. For the pinky/chords thing in emacs, I've be able to adapt by actually using other fingers quite a bit (shifting my hand so I can hold control with my ring or even pointer); and I really don't use multichord combos that much, usually using longer sequences instead (e.g. for indent- region, I hit Esc, then type C-\ rather than typing Alt-Ctrl-\ .) Fortunately this has worked well for me and my hands over time.

<comment><USER4> > I've be able to adapt by actually using other fingers quite a bit

I actually use the part of my palm directly underneath my pinky to hit the Ctrl key. It works quite well on a ThinkPad keyboard (for my hand shape/size, anyway).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A standard package system is THE feature of Emacs 24.

<comment><USER6> I have been using the package manager and it is a much better way to install programs in emacs than the old way of modifying your .emacs and specifying a load path. It works very well. I wish more people would upload packages to the main repository but putting this in emacs 24 will probably accelerate this.

<comment><USER7> Emacs 24 by default uses the GNU package archive, which is limited to software they want on it.

However, `package.el` defines an alist of `package-archives` which you can add entries to. My hope is that then someone will end up creating a less restrictive package archive to complement the offerings in the GNU one.

Nathan Weizenbaum, of Haml fame, has done some work on a project for creating Emacs Lisp package archives and an accompanying front-end here: <http://code.google.com/p/marmalade/>

<comment><USER8> It's just an integration of ELPA (<http://tromey.com/elpa/>) which has been around for quite a while. According to the mailing lists Tom Tromey will continue to maintain his archive in parallel. I'm not sure what licensing restrictions he has but I'm fairly sure you don't have to assign copyright as per FSF projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "With the increasing popularity of distributed version control systems such as bzr"

That is the first time I've seen anyone use Bazaar as an example of a DVC that is gaining in popularity.

<comment><USER10> It's the one the emacs uses.

<comment><USER11> Isn't it also used by Canonical's Launchpad?

<comment><USER12> Yes. If you've tried it, you may agree that bzr is to git as Ubuntu is to Debian.

<comment><USER11> I never went beyond the basics with both git and bzr, so, they both look the same from here.

In no small measure, I am happy I never gave them a serious problem to solve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2010-03/msg002...](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2010-03/msg00272.html)

Does anyone know if the concurrency and lexbind features are still planned to be part of Emacs 24?

<comment><USER14> I really hope so. Mostly concurrency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> <http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsReleaseDates>

What changed to go from releases every 4-7 years, to releases every 1-2 years?

<comment><USER11> It's really hard to find features missing from Emacs after 23 releases.

<comment><USER16> No kidding! Emacs 23 even added support antialiased text for heavens sake. Who needs such a useless feature?

<comment><USER11> Emacs always had anti-aliased text if you used it within a terminal that had it.

I never missed anti-aliased text that much - there are plenty of good fonts that render well without it. Now that it has, it looks much better. However, the idea of giving up its power in order to get pretty fonts with a lesser editor is ludicrous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Emacs 24 also has a new minor mode, electric-pair-mode, that auto-inserts matching parens à la Textmate. Quite useful.

<comment><USER11> Knowing Emacs, it can probably be convinced to generate all kinds of brackets, HTML tags and so on, based on what major mode is running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting post. It would be nice if someone could link to a site or blog with more details and/or discussion about the new features in Emacs 24.

<comment><USER17> Here is the entire list of new stuff:

<http://repo.or.cz/w/emacs.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/etc/NEWS>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nothing really "killer" though Bidi is nice. I just setup emacs (trying to learn it to compare to Vim) the other day on my Mac.

<comment><USER20> I wish vim gets the bidi support as well.

It gets it automatically on a terminal that supports it (such as konsole) but having it sort of built in would be nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seriously, there are still some features left to be new in Emacs? :-)

<comment><USER22> strong-ai-mode

<comment><USER11> that and strong-ai-load-brain-state for loading brain dumps of great programmers to do pair-programming with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone else feel like they are living in a pretty hilarious future realm when they see there's something called "Emacs 24" in the world?

In 2150, will we be using "Emacs 395"?

Maybe I should get my old vt100 out of the closet and see if it still works.

<comment><USER24> In 2150, roughly 139 years from now, assuming a major release every 2 years, we should be on emacs 93 or therabouts.

As long as we still use text entry for programming, we'll still be using emacs.... it will keep up with the times.

<comment><USER23> What if we use text entry...but not from our fingers?

<comment><USER25> Then we won't need to remap caps-lock anymore.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 50th Anniversary of Doug Engelbart's Great Demo - <AUTHOR> https://doug-50.info/ <comment><USER2> Just yesterday I watched an hour-long interview [0] from 2002 with Doug Engelbart.

On finding a wife. Engelbart moves to a university town, ditches a male- focused hobby, and finds a more gender neutral hobby in folk dancing. Echoes of Noyce and choir.

He turns down an offer from HP after asking whether he would be able to work on computers and being told "no".

He claims during his 12 or so years working at SRI before the '68 demo that most of the support for his ideas came from outside of the institution. He says that later he learned about paradigms (but claims not from Kuhn), which allowed him to understand the resistance he kept facing.

He gives credit to people with tangential skills that made the presentation possible: The machinist mouse-maker who was also a wood carver, the colleague's wife who was also a theater director.

He laments the fact that the easiest-to-learn tools out-competed tools that gave the greatest return on learning.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeSgaJt27PM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeSgaJt27PM)

</comment><comment><USER3> Tomorrow at Somerset House in London there is a salon style event themed on the Mother of All Demos:

> A day of talks, performances and workshops marking the 50th anniversary of > internet pioneer Douglas Engelbart's original 1968 presentation of the key > elements that would shape modern computing.

[https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/mother-all- demos-k...](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/mother-all-demos-kassem- mosse-atau-tanaka-ted-hunt)

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh cool! The mentioned Computer History Museum celebration site is online: [https://thedemoat50.org/](https://thedemoat50.org/)

The symposium is this Sunday in Mountain View: [https://thedemoat50.org/symposium/](https://thedemoat50.org/symposium/) I'm looking forward to it! It seems it won't be live streamed, but other events will be: [https://thedemoat50.org/events/](https://thedemoat50.org/events/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Ted Nelson's eulogy for Doug Engelbart [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMjPqr1s-cg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMjPqr1s-cg)

<comment><USER6> Wow - well worth a watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv- zdhzMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY)

</comment><comment><USER8> If I remember correctly Bret Victor was considering making a public demo of their investigations around this date to conmemorate this 50 anniversary.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is the chorded keyboard commercially available? I've always thought that it might be a very handy gadget.

<comment><USER10> One can also chord on conventional keyboards. A cheap keyboard with 2KRO (2-key rollover) and 4 modifiers, might be held upside-down, providing Shift/Ctrl/Alt/Meta plus a key or two. And a 2KRO with 8 modifiers (left and right aren't merged) might be used two handed. Some keyboards special-case common key sets like WASD. A 6KRO keyboard permits one-handed chording with arbitrary keys. USB boot-mode keyboards are limited to 6KRO plus 8 modifiers. :/ Full n-key rollover (NKRO) USB HID keyboards exist, but last I looked some years ago, it was a niche mess.

A half-century on, an we still can't play keyboards like pianos... "if your customers aren't complaining loudly of being crippled, you're overbuilding".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unless I misunderstood, these guys were trying to build something to show _today._ Did anything come of it? I ask because our startup is working on some of the same things: [http://mimix.io](http://mimix.io)

<comment><USER12> Since Engelbarts death in 2013 or even the 40th anniversary of the great demo, there is a diverse group of people who for most of the time were unclear whether the human system side or the tool system side should get focus and come first, but in anticipation and preparation of the 50th anniversary, it got more practical and several separate, individual demos were created and will be demoed in a separate event today and during breaks between the celebrations tomorrow. They're listed here:

      - https://thedemoat50.org/symposium/demos/

Some of the history can be found here:

      - https://www.youtube.com/user/frodehegland/playlists (Future of Text playlists, 2014 is on Vimeo)
      - https://ualr.edu/jdberleant/URLtable-DB.html
      - https://soundcloud.com/samhahn/tracks
      - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQw8OcRQ0Ws&list=PLYbSlBxcChOJ4KV2XIyR9oydfGzbvm1ai
      - https://doug-50.info/journal/
      - https://jrnl.global/journal/

There's more, spread all over the place.

<comment><USER13> I created a public wiki style Jupyter notebook on Google's Colab platform where anyone with a Google account can edit and run:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18640656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18640656)

Since it is a shared programmable (Turing complete) environment, I hope people in the community might find it interesting and would like to contribute and share their expertise and creative insights.

<comment><USER12> I personally don't like Google, they constantly mess up my writing/publishing and a lot more of bad/evil things. I don't have their software/code, can't selfhost it (not libre-freely licensed), and believe that things should always work offline just as well. Still, do you have a link?

Others in the community usually don't have such reservations/objections, or don't care enough about their own work and capabilities available to them.

<comment><USER13> The file is just a generic Jupyter Notebook (JSON with .ipynb extension). The link to colab is just an iframe wrap to allow authenticated user to change it.

[https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1k4oC2bzjgUOiU9vdadj...](https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1k4oC2bzjgUOiU9vdadjrBpEwWGaqJWsA)

Functional wise, it works just like a wiki.

It can be hosted on any Jupyter platform (such as google colab, Azure notebook, your own Jupyter instance) or a Jupyter viewer platform if you do not want to run he code. But you will lose the capability of pushing the update back to the shared copy.

Here is an example of saving it to a github gist and viewed in nbviewer:

[https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/gist/ontouchstart/f53de6f9ba447...](https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/gist/ontouchstart/f53de6f9ba447bdd60782efc1ea6bec9)

Due to the restrictions of GitHub, the YouTube video is not rendered in gist

[https://gist.github.com/ontouchstart/f53de6f9ba447bdd60782ef...](https://gist.github.com/ontouchstart/f53de6f9ba447bdd60782efc1ea6bec9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Engelbart's keyboard is discussed in this chapter on chorded keyboard boards:

[http://www.billbuxton.com/input06.ChordKeyboards.pdf](http://www.billbuxton.com/input06.ChordKeyboards.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's strange to witness what is essentially a working version of Google Hangouts and Google Docs ... from fifty years ago.

We're definitely doing something wrong.

<comment><USER16> This strikes a nerve.

I had the good fortune to be able to work with xBase languages (predominantly CA-Clipper) when I began programming. I made software for retail outlets: pos, inventory, accounts, all the jazz. The most memorable thing to me was the Phone Directory we shipped with it. It did one thing right: `set filter to cSearch $ upper( rtrim( ltrim( name + phone ) ) )`. This is a case-insensitive regex match over both name and phone. Customers used it all the time, and they held that db close to their hearts. It was 50 lines of code written in an afternoon and just worked ever after.

Creating a phone directory with that affordance is a lot of work today. However user interfaces are different today. 80s DOS text mode only had a keyboard input, a 16-color palette, 80 columns over 25 rows, and just text, text, text. Modern web UI is event-driven, has millions of colors, works across screen sizes, and is networked by default.

Though with this essential complexity, there is so much accidental complexity. It shouldn't be this hard to build software. The essence of a double-entry bookkeeping software 30 years ago is the same as one we build today. A new framework is probably not the answer. New languages (or old giants) and formal systems might be. Ballerina, Unison, Dark, Ur/Web, Elm, Reason and so on.

<comment><USER17> You know, I also got my (official) start in an xBASE language (FoxPro), and while I am obsessed with the history of inventors like Englebart and his successors, those xBASE environments had more going for them than I tend to remember.

"Ordinary" people could use those tools to make useful things. We seem to have gone backwards from there.

What was different about those systems?

They were integrated _usage_ environments. Batteries included. In FoxPro, you got:

        - built-in database
        - built-in documentation
        - built-in UI for editing data
        - built-in UI for editing schema
        - windowed environment (even in DOS)
        - oh yeah and a scripting language

This was first and foremost a _usable environment_ immediately. "Development" was an advanced usage.

Emacs is this way. Smalltalk is this way. What they get is that programming _languages_ are useless by themselves.

Contrast with now: the apps we build involve wiring together a database from here, a compiler from there, just figuring out how you're going to make pieces communicate and finally, you know, get something on the screen. Sure, there's an upside to composing systems a la carte. But the learning curve is far more prohibitive.

(Also, those xBASE systems just _will not die_. Just this morning I got an email question about a system that's been in service for 25 years now. How many of today's apps do you think will still be used (indeed, sold!) in 2043?)

<comment><USER18> Check out picolisp. It has a built-in database and can call existing C libraries and Java (using reflection) without any fuss.

Though apparently, it doesn't have lexical closures: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16981170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16981170)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Infinitesimal machinery (1993) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/290G/Papers/Feynman83.pdf <comment><USER2> I can't get over the fact he basically invents a DLP-like spatial light modulator in a thought experiment 15 years before the real thing, but then immediately dismisses it as useless. That's nuts!

Or maybe it was sarcasm that didn't make it through to the transcript?

</comment><comment><USER3> "You get this little machine you can control from the outside, and it has a sword. The machine gets in the water with a paramecium, and you try to stab it" 35 years after this statement these nano devices still do not exist even in laboratory settings. What has gone wrong? What is preventing this?</comment>


First bit of success from a randomized trial of a COVID-19 treatment - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/first-treatment-for-sars-cov-2-shortens-recovery-time/ <comment><USER2> I've read a few news articles covering this, but found the BBC version shallow. The arstechnica version posted earlier [1] had more rigour. Also, it has been updated since it was posted.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23022911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23022911)

</comment><comment><USER3> This isn't the first treatment by any means.

There's a world outside the US.</comment>


0.00000000000000002 Seconds - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171113104709.htm <comment><USER2> 0.00000000000000002 of second, wow,

i mean if you think about it proportionally the difference between that fraction of a second and a second is far greater that the difference between a second and the age of the universe.</comment>


Node and Express Tips - <AUTHOR> http://calv.info/node-and-express-tips/ <comment><USER2> I would also recommend everyone to check out express-on-railway <https://github.com/1602/express-on-railway> a rails like mvc framework for node with intuitive design to be adaptable for sockets.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good tips. Another I'd add is using the express-resource module for routing.

<https://github.com/visionmedia/express-resource/>

<comment><USER4> Express-resource is cool - I haven't gotten the chance to use it in a project yet so I can't comment too much on it.

Our app isn't grouped strictly into resources, though it's something we might be able to benefit from. Currently we use different pieces of middleware to load whatever items the route needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice! 'async' is almost essential for me: the 'waterfall' style in particular. I modularize everything too, but using AMD modules.

\- I move between client and server fairly frequently, and AMD works in both via RequireJS.

\- I often share code between client and server, eg, my current app has a shared models module that is augmented by the client and server-specific modules that import it.

I avoid adding methods by a string for the simple fact that JSHint warns about using [] rather than . wherever it can (I think the only time I use [] is for Express' badly named 'static' plugin - 'static' is a reserved word.

Following you on Twitter (I'm @mikemaccana). Hope to catch you about someday!

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I haven't been using AMD so much since I've mainly been working on the server-side js, but it seems like a similar structure.

The shared code between client and server is definitely an interesting concept. I'd be interested to see some of your posts on how this ends up working!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If Calvin is reading this thread:

I am sure you are a most upstanding, interesting, and funny fellow. I respect that you appear to possess a love of hats.

Despite my sincerest regards for your person and well being, I must say that the UI of your site is somewhat hard to use. I, and others like me, read the web as much from our small screen devices as we do from our big screens.

Your site, when viewed on an iPhone, has a large overlay at the bottom containing a photo of you wearing a hat and your name, and it takes up nearly 1/3 of the entire viewable screen. It makes reading the content of your site uncomfortable, and nigh impossible. This is at least the 2nd article from your site which I have had to avoid from Hacker News. This is disappointing, since having made the homepage several times indicates you are someone I might find interesting. As it stands, I am bereft of being able to discovering your thoughts and reflecting on them myself.

Please, consider a modification to your UI for those of us who only have small viewports with which to interact with the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Designer here. Good point about mobile styles! I got frustrated with the media queries and stopped short of fixing em, but as soon as Calvin pulls now he should have a more lenient header on small screens.

And you're right, he is a hat connoisseur.

<comment><USER6> Great update Ian. Site is fabulous now. I'm enjoying your article on black. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks man!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Instead of including modules by complicated pathing like require('../../../shared/utils'), it's much simpler to require('utils'). Utils can be symlinked from another folder in the source tree so that you can continue to actively develop it and the changes will be reflected in the dependent modules."

This sounds like a maintenance nightmare when you start juggling lots of code.

<comment><USER8> Also important to not fall down the hole in a couple of years where these shared libraries are being used all over the place and changing them becomes hard. Good to always question if they should be a module or perhaps their own api.

<comment><USER5> Agreed re: shared libraries being used all over the place, but I don't think that requires changing a module to an API.

git submodules are designed to solve this problem and do so very well, allowing each project that uses a shared module to include whatever version it pleases, yet allowing the project using the shared module to update/rollback to a newer/older version.</comment></comment></comment>


What is the best way to find engineers to recruit for a project running stealth? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Generally referrals from existing engineers is the most common.

Outside of that I have seen a couple of stealth startups create a separate corporation and use it to recruit people. In some cases there are some advantages to having a separate corp to employ people and have its sole client be the stealth startup.

EDIT: Fixed some grammar.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a pretty good idea actually, thanks a lot for taking the time to help me out!

<comment><USER2> your welcome, good luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hire a 3rd party headhunter on a project retainer. A seasoned search guy will have the ability to connect with the right level talent quickly. He should also have the business acumen and diplomatic skills to insure confidentiality. Serious candidate conversations covered with a mutual NDA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, I appreciate your answer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey,

I'm an Associate consultant at VenturePact - a New York-based, invite-only marketplace that connects companies with pre-screened developers and designers based on their specific needs. I would be happy to help you find the developers which fit your budget and location to help you execute your requirements. Plus, our development partners pay us to be part of our network - so we won't charge you anything.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Really looking forward to hearing from you. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you considered, you know, to stop the stealth mode bullshit?

I mean, really?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahahaha actually I completely agree that for most situations running in stealth is highly disadvantageous. I'd explain why it seems to be the right choice for us but I'll save us our time. We're trying to go public as fast as we can though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's just like any other kind of recruiting except you don't state anything about the product or company you are uncomfortable about, only the technology. Early stage startups have a much harder time recruiting experienced developers/engineers, so aim for junior/mid-level or just outsource it.

To recruit rather than outsource, and do it for free:

1\. Use word of mouth referrals.

2\. Network with others in local tech gatherings. Sites like meetup.com and your local entrepreneurial support groups are good places to start.

3\. Browse around and contact directly via linkedin.

4\. Post onto mailing lists via meetup.com, google groups, etc. for lists that allow job postings. Be sure to follow all the rules.

To recruit when you have cash to spend, in addition to above methods- first create a good site with a careeers section. You don't need to say anything about the product but you need presence to show validity and seriousness. Then:

1\. Post job on sites that focus on startups like HN and [http://careers.stackoverflow.com/](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/) or post job on sites that manage resumes for you and also post to [http://indeed.com/](http://indeed.com/) like [https://www.workable.com](https://www.workable.com)

2\. Use recruiters/head hunters.

However, the fastest way to get started is to either:

1\. Spec it out, learn to develop it yourself, and set it up. It will probably be terrible if you don't know what you are doing, but you'll thank yourself that you tried later, if for no other reason than you better appreciate the engineer and what skills are necessary. Don't assume you hack-ass project will be sustainable though and it may even detract developers/engineers from coming aboard. But if you have something, that's better than nothing.

2\. Farm it out. Outsource development and hope what you get in return is not really terrible. Bet on it being terrible though, and expensive.</comment>


You can train your body into thinking it's had medicine - <AUTHOR> http://mosaicscience.com/story/medicine-without-the-medicine-how-to-train-your-immune-system-placebo <comment><USER2> I'll share a funny story that's on topic, if you don't mind.

Years and years ago, I worked as a house painter. One of the guys on the crew was a guy who went by the name Mugsy. Mugsy had a bit of a cocaine habit. Since he was a lifelong friend of the boss, this was tolerated. In any case, Mugsy worked off and on.

The boss told me once about what would happen with Mugsy on payday. The boss would pay Mugsy at the end of the day, and then they would all get in the van for the ride home. The boss told me that cocaine is often cut with baking soda, which can act as a laxative. Mugsy would be in the van on the ride home, with a pocket full of money, just dreaming about being able to spend some of that money on cocaine. The boss reasoned that Mugsy's body must have associated money with cocaine with the laxative effect of the baking soda — because every payday, Mugsy would be farting for the entire ride home. He couldn't help himself!

<comment><USER3> Cocaine is also a stimulant for the digestive system. While not a laxative per se, it can have a similar effect. So Mugsy's symptoms may be more directly related to his body expecting the cocaine.

<comment><USER4> And the digestive system is extremely sensitive to emotional state. As a kid, anything stressful would make me feel like running to the toilets.

<comment><USER3> That's normal. There is a reason people literally crap themselves with terror. It's a great way to dissuade a predator bent on eating you.

<comment><USER5> Is that the (sole) reason? More than one martial arts trainer has told me that if you are definitely about to be involved in a fight -- and you can't run away (number one preference) -- if you have a full bladder you should consciously empty it. Wet trousers are far preferable to having your bladder rupture, so it's a sensible pragmatic (or instinctive) action. I'd imagine there'd be similar benefits in evacuating your bowels.

<comment><USER6> For what it's worth I heard birds do that to get lighter and faster in order to flee a danger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wim Hoff [1] is a great example of someone who can turn a lot of the knobs on his metabolism that aren't available to most of us. Apparently, he says it's something you can learn to do. If these researchers got more concrete about how patients can learn to do this and to get physiologically measurable effects, it would actually certainly lower health care costs.

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

<comment><USER8> Interesting. There has been at least one study about him and his techniques:

 _Healthy volunteers practicing the learned techniques exhibited profound increases in the release of epinephrine, which in turn led to increased production of anti-inflammatory mediators and subsequent dampening of the proinflammatory cytokine response elicited by intravenous administration of bacterial endotoxin. This study could have important implications for the treatment of a variety of conditions associated with excessive or persistent inflammation, especially autoimmune diseases in which therapies that antagonize proinflammatory cytokines have shown great benefit._

Full paper: [http://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7379.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7379.abstract)

<comment><USER9> If I read the methods correctly, then how does this fall into the category of "learned behavior"?

Exposing the body to these temperature extremes, which are far outside the norms most of us experience and which must induce borderline hypothermia, surely has its own physiological effect.

I don't doubt the effect can be beneficial, but that seems squarely in the camp of physical treatment as opposed to "thinking" yourself into a different bodily state.

<comment><USER10> To avoid confusion read my answer on cognitive science stack exchange. While it is just an opinion, it is quite an informed one. I participated in the study above. Our final challenge was walking on a ski mountain for 2.5 hours -7 degrees celsius with shorts and shoes. You could bring a hat for style points (I did :) ) but no shirt. Once in a lifetime experience: hugging people in ski-suits who were on vacation while I was dressed like I'd go to a summer pool party.

[http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/10651/does-wim- hof...](http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/10651/does-wim-hof-really- consciously-control-his-autonomic-nervous-systemx)

I agree with you on the idea it's not classical conditioning. The WHM has 3 components: cold exposure, breathing technique and the right mindset (mindset is akin to optimism but it is more stereotypical game-shaman like, e.g. "the cold is your friend."). IMO the breathing technique produces the biggest effect, then cold exposure itself and the mindset acts like an amplification of what you learned. In my _subjective_ experience I'd ratio the effects as 41/39/20 (breathing,exposure,mindset).

<comment><USER8> Impressive. Can you point to some references regarding the breathing technique?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Quote: "By the end of the year, she had received just six doses of the drug instead of the usual twelve. Marette responded just as her doctors would have hoped from the full drug amount."

I'm sorry, at this point I stopped reading. The Doctors don't know how she would have responded to the full drug, because it didn't happen! The word 'hoped' is not testable! Where was the control (Quasi-experiment)? There is just not way to tell if she would have responded better, for all we know she was 50% better than she could have been if she'd taken the full 12 doses. Or maybe 6 doses was just the right amount for her.

I do believe that the brain is a powerful tool and have read research that shows we can change things like body heat, pain and more with mind, but this story did not have anything that evaluated the impact and cannot be used as evidence of such!

<comment><USER12> Hmm I'm pretty sure that 'hoped' in this case means something like: "Well, in a normal case we would have recommended 12 doses of the medicine in order to get a full recovery."

This is not like testing stuff with a computer program, you can not reset the human to a known state and replicate the experiment all over again.

Following your logic, even all vaccines are a lie, how can we know that the vaccines that we take every year are doing anything?

<comment><USER13> > Following your logic, even all vaccines are a lie, how can we know that the > vaccines that we take every year are doing anything?

By having a basic understanding of the scientific method and control groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone who is interested in mind over matter should check out Dr. Sarno's work - [http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing- Body...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing- Body/dp/0446675156)

Similar to the vomiting poster, I had/have a longtime chronic nerve pain issue in my arms and legs that this book was tremendously helpful in managing. While fixing bad posture and a variety of other things helped, this book helped me get to the point where most days I'm in no pain.

<comment><USER15> I highly recommend Sarno's work as well. I had severe tendinitis in my wrists for about 4 years. I was only able to work about 3 hours a day and was getting pretty desperate, so I decided to give what I thought was Sarno's "crackpot theory" a try. 4 weeks later my tendinitis was completely gone.

<comment><USER16> This is interesting. What kind of techniques does he advocate?

<comment><USER17> [http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing- Body...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing- Body/dp/0446675156)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You can do a lot just by deciding that's what's happening. Spent years with a mystery vomiting illness. Wallowed in my misery. One day, decided "I'm better now" \- and lo and fucking behold I've been fine for a year.

Anecdotal, sure, but either the illness or the cure was in my head.

Also... Rasputin and the Romanovs - he could stop Alexei's bleeding (haemophilia) with a _phone call_ , when physicians had had no joy - the boy took after his father and was deeply devout.

Anyway. Interesting stuff.

<comment><USER19> Instead of thinking about the illness being in your head, why not think of the decision being in your body?

<comment><USER18> If there's even a difference!

<comment><USER19> Like it or not, 90% of the body's serotonin is produced by gut microbes... Dopamine, GABA and other lovely chemicals are also contributed by the endless sea of creatures within.

:)

<comment><USER18> Yup - which may have been where my problems started, as I inadvertently radically modified my intestinal flora with a brutal and strict diet - for a long time put it down to having fundamentally screwed up my digestion, but towards the point when I decided to think of it differently, I had been wondering if I'd screwed up neurotransmitter levels via microbiota genocide, and was trapped in a vicious cycle - hence the decision to go "no, you don't feel nauseous, you're hungry".

<comment><USER19> Something similar happened to me when I was fighting some (likely chronic) yeast and staph infections last year. I got pretty strict with my diet and was underweight by about 10 pounds. Even though I was eating very healthy, I wasn't letting myself eat stuff I was hungry for. Eventually I decided I couldn't restrict myself anymore, and started eating regular again. I bounced back pretty well after that.

Sounds like you decided to reinterpret a bodily cue that you'd been interpreting as nausea to mean hunger. That's awesome. Reminds me of hearing that many people misinterpret thirst for hunger, and are dehydrated because of that. Also reminds me of my grandpa, who never took pain medication, even at the dentist. He said that it didn't hurt, it just felt intensely warm.

<comment><USER18> I do similar with pain - break it into its component parts, and you can experience it as a warm tickling, or pressure, if you've really managed to do a number - although some things one can't map, like having finger nails torn off - although maybe that's because it's an uncommon pain one doesn't usually get a chance to examine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >If used widely, advocates say, substituting some of the drugs we take for placebos could save billions of dollars in healthcare costs.

Drugs are not the 'cost' per pill. It's all in development, so this is a silly point. Cost will go up, or part of the population will get slammed.

Placebo's are over rated. As such you have to be very sceptical of this article, it screams of alternative medicine. I wouldn't base much on this article alone.

[http://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are- weak...](http://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-weak- regression-to-the-mean-is-the-main-reason-ineffective-treatments-appear-to- work/)

>In 1975, a psychologist in New York was studying taste aversion in a group of rats and got an utterly mystifying result.

I'd be very interesting if this was reproducible.

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of the story of the Vatican official sent to judge the miraculous healing properties of a shrine. He looked at the pile of crutches, canes and wheelchairs left by "cured" people. "What? No wooden legs?"

Placebos can work in some narrow circumstances, but they cannot fix some basic problems. Pain relief? sure. But in place of an antibiotic? Expect a lawsuit.

<comment><USER21> I hadn't heard of the Vatican official story, but certainly many religiously minded people will use prayer as a self-regulated placebo.

[http://whywontgodhealamputees.com](http://whywontgodhealamputees.com)

Which makes me wonder if some of the more faith healing type of religions end up being sued when the prayer doesn't actually produce results.

<comment><USER3> The story is meant to have come from Lourdes, which I believe the Vatican has failed to recognize as a legit miracle despite the location being a pilgrimage for many Catholics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My bullshit detectors are leaping off the charts.

There are so many completely uncontrolled experiments described there, and the article just jumps to the conclusion that they demonstrate an effect. Add on top that the theory makes not a fleck of sense, and you have no credibility left.

<comment><USER23> People get their kick from caffeine the moment they start their drink even though it obviously takes much longer for caffeine to actually work. There's a little something there, but I don't know how MUCH of something.

<comment><USER24> I experimented with decaf beans once. Normally I need my normal coffee, or I get a headache.

I knowingly substituted decaf and went a few days with no headache. Good decaf is hard to come by though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting stuff indeed, and it comes with a giant implication that few want to face. In the US, a country that so embarrassingly struggles with the finance of health care, preferring to insert inessential insurance and bloated pharma industries between patients and decent health outcomes, we have to expect that the news that treatment itself may be optional will be most eagerly received by those industries. It is not good to hand a fig leaf such as this idea to industries that profit from withholding care.

</comment><comment><USER26> I was very sick as a child: I had neurodermitis (Lichen simplex chronicus) so I was constantly scratched bloody. I also had asthma and countless plant, animal and food-allergies, so I couldn't eat most things (dairy-products, sugar in every form except honey, salt, chocolate, white flour, eggs, nuts, citrus-fruits, the list goes on and on). Spent a lot of time in hospital.

When I was about 9 or 10 years old I got to a point where I was completely fed-up by all the rules I had to follow: Eat this. Don't eat this. Be careful during sports because of your asthma. There's ozone in the forest.

So I decided to ignore every single symptom until it got so strong that I'd have to go to hospital again. I also started showering cold every day and trained myself to sleep without a blanket, so I wouldn't sweat, which would irritate my skin.

I don't know when it happened, but all my problems completely disappeared over time. I'm 30 now, tests I do now and then, say my allergies and asthma are still there, but i'm more or less symptom-free.

Whenever I feel bad I consciously use the placebo-effect, for example by drinking a large glass of water and telling myself that THIS glass of water is EXACTLY what my body needed right now and will make everything better.

Note that I'm not advocating to reduce medicine: When I have a headache, I'm the first to take an aspirin. All I'm saying is that there's definitely a large cognitive component in health and feeling well, which can be trained.

</comment><comment><USER23> So I'm not sure if this article is a hunk of lies or true, but when I want to induce the placebo effect, I just google some random ingredient in the beverage I'm drinking with "{ingredient} Cures Virus".For example "Manganese Cures Virus". You're inevitably going to find someone who says yeah it's pretty effective, and I just kinda say sure why not, I believe it. This way you know it's not expensive I mean you were already drinking it, but now that you KNOW it's there helping you it helps. You're like I'm going to feel better I've got "INGREDIENT" on my side! Additionally because it was a drink you'll probably drink some more fluids.

<comment><USER27> The thing about the internet is that you can find evidence to support your theory 100%, and evidence that does the exact opposite. The internet is not always a source of knowledge, but it can always be a source of reinforcement for one's belief.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The claims made in the article kindly submitted here (which does, by the way, come from a pretty good source publication) far exceed what reliable evidence on the issue has shown, and is characteristic of the exaggerated misunderstanding of similar study results by the article author, Jo Marchant. Marchant writes in this vein in other publications, most timed to promote her new book _Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body_ , but careful researchers who have examined the evidence disagree that the reported effects are real and meaningful.[1] A review of the book[2] agrees with me and with the whole planet that current medical care could emphasize empathy with patients more, but finds much to disagree with in Marchant's book after commenting on many things the reviewer liked about the book. The overall review summary is

"I can't wholeheartedly recommend the book. Overall, it gives the impression that we know much more than we do. The studies described are very preliminary and far from ready for prime time; we know that preliminary studies are often overturned by larger, better-designed studies. I found some things in the book disturbing. I don't condone her use of the term "Western medicine;" there is only one medicine. I was appalled that after a C-section she had a VBAC at home, giving birth to her second baby underwater with the assistance of a non- NHS midwife who she believed was less likely to transfer her to a hospital if something went wrong. In my opinion, that showed very poor judgment. She misrepresents the safety of home births. She even trots out the old "death by medicine" canard. She claims that statins may only benefit 1 in 50 patients (true, but misleadingly alarmist when taken out of context as statins do save lives).

"Conclusion: Marchant has interesting ideas, but a bad title"

[1] David Gorski, 11 January 2016, "Is 'harnessing the power of placebo' worthwhile to treat anything?"

[https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-harnessing-the- power...](https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-harnessing-the-power-of- placebo-worthwhile-to-treat-anything/)

[2] Harriet Hall, 26 January 2016, "Cure Is About Caring, Not Curing: Placebos, Alternative Medicine, and Patient Comfort"

[https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/cure-is-about-caring- no...](https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/cure-is-about-caring-not-curing- placebos-alternative-medicine-and-patient-comfort/)

</comment><comment><USER29> > He hit on strawberry milk mixed with green food colouring and essential oil. > Its bright colour and overwhelming lavender flavour creates a bewildering > mix of sensory cues, like drinking a violent, bittersweet battle between > green and purple.

> So far, Schedlowski has shown that after being associated with CsA, the > drink reliably induces immunosuppression in healthy volunteers, creating on > average 60–80 per cent of the effect of the drug.

Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER30> I used to be able to create a variety of physiological effects by focusing on them long enough. Especially in terms of heart rate, temperature, or even a mental high. Been out of practice for a long time. I will say that two I really wanted to do nearly on demand were equivalents to caffeine and good sleep. To this day, I can't eliminate the need for or problems following lack of either. ;)

<comment><USER31> > out of practice

What's practice for that like?

<comment><USER30> Meditation is vague word. There's guides for how to do this online and in books. I tried a bunch until some worked. Basic thing was just letting go of most thoughts, focusing on one thing, intending it to happen, and letting it happen without forcing it. You need feedback like a monitor showing you numbers and paying attention to feel of your own body. Eventually, some part of brain delivers. It delivers better over time.

Best I can describe. The breathing tricks were most valuable as breathing and mental state are so interconnected. Comes in handy for calming down or pumping up. Also helpful in forms of meditation.

<comment><USER32> Any specific techniques/pointers for pumping up? It seemed to me meditation was all about relaxation, and my problem is it seems I can easily calm down but anything that would increase alertness without needing chemistry, that would be much appreciated.

<comment><USER30> Lost most memory to a brain injury in an accident. I'm coming up blank on this one unfortunately. The thing I remember was that it was about association. You associate certain songs, words, thoughts, actions, etc with emotional states. So, just as you can calm down to some, you can pump up to some faster.

Little things like walking around or even a proper warm up can help. I do remember repeating the same songs during key phases of a workout. I still have to avoid listening to those songs as I go to sleep at night as my brain gets wide awake.

<comment><USER32> Thanks a lot! Guess I might try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Along the same lines, I have asthma, and sometimes funky smells trigger my asthma. I've often wondered how much of that was psychological. It would be really freaking awesome to suppress the psychological portion of my asthma and boost the effects of my inhalers.

</comment><comment><USER19> Let me just remind everyone that "mind" and "body" are constructs. (I'm looking at you, "skeptics".)

for example: [http://news.wisc.edu/study-reveals-gene-expression- changes-w...](http://news.wisc.edu/study-reveals-gene-expression-changes-with- meditation/)

If unspecified "mindfulness" can have such fundamental physical effects, I'm having a hard time seeing how direct psychosomatic engagement is so far fetched. Truly, while the Wisconsin studies are lumping participants' psychosomatic experiences into a broad category of "mindfulness meditation", every participants experience of "mindfulness meditation" was a unique journey into the depths of their inner world, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually; these categories are different angles on one thing: the experience of the human animal.

</comment><comment><USER34> So, the immediate followup: drugs out there that I could preemptively condition myself for that would be particularly useful in the future. Like, could I condition an epinephrine response so I have a more reliable response to an unknown allergy than hoping someone has an epipen?

<comment><USER23> Just bring your own epipen. I would not risk not being able to "believe".

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is very similar to what Wim Hof ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof)) is now verifiably able to do. He's made headlines recently with his ability to control his immune response, which was previously thought impossible.

Tim Ferriss has a pretty interesting interview with him, minor language barrier notwithstanding: [http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/09/07/the-iceman- wim-hof/](http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/09/07/the-iceman-wim-hof/)

</comment><comment><USER36> It's called Homeopathy.</comment>


How It Feels to Be a Young American in 2014 (Hint: Shitty) - <AUTHOR> http://www.refinethemind.com/young-american-2014/

<comment><USER2> just no.

It's a whinefest. Yes, the young today have it kind of shitty. So did the young of yesteryear. Not everyone young person is "brokenhearted", and the idea that everyone has "psychological issues" extends to young and old. That is not a peculiar phenomenon of this generation.

<comment><AUTHOR> i'm the author actually.

did i say other generations are without sadness/psychological issues? nope. just speaking about the generation i know best: my own.

you're right that the quote about everyone being "brokenhearted" may have been a bit melodramatic, but i don't think it's too far from the truth. shit's cold in america, man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Regret reading.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the very specific feedback</comment></comment>


Regarding John Nack on Apple's Control Over Native iPhone OS Software - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/nack_control

<comment><USER2> It is becoming difficult to take Mr. Gruber seriously. The way he managed to frame Apple's actions as in any part 'in the best interest of the users' is just plain silly. Apple is interested in total control of the App ecosystem for several reasons and most, if not all, of them are solely based in the interior of Apple's money chest.

"Users have a system where they can install apps with zero worries about misconfiguration or somehow doing something wrong."

I've never ever thought twice about installing an Android application. The security model on Android is more impeccable than on Apple's. Apple's requires me to trust Jobs to tell me what I can, can't, should and shouldn't run (literally. My understanding is that there is little isolation between apps from an architectural security perspective). With Android, I simply have to trust an open source Dalvik engine which, at its very core, isolates the applications.

"Adobe [...] knows that the best mobile platform, the one whose aesthetic and audience most closely align with their own, is the iPhone OS."

Maybe, for now; I'm not even convinced Adobe's target audience is iPhone OS users (wouldn't Adobe's target audience be ALL mobile OSes), but who cares? That's like whining about my target audience being Cuba, it really doesn't matter does it? Eventually the Cubans will go elsewhere if they want US goods. I don't really understand what it means for a mobile OS to have an "aesthetic" that aligns with, what, an entire company? What does that even mean? Adobe is clearly NOT aligned with Apple if Adobe is interested in /being on iPhone OS and Apple slams the door in their face repeatedly/. I think it's abundantly clear that Adobe is happy enough to throw their weight, voice, etc (as small as it maybe perceived to be) behind Android.

It's like someone charging you twice as much for a dish that tastes half as good, but drizzles it in fancy sauce. When you peel back the superficial appearances, you see that one platform has more developers resources, more "openness", more transparency, and generally treats developers better. If you think the iPhone OS is "slick" or you enjoy the current App market dominance (hmm, first mover advantage ANYONE?), fine. But those things are more than at risk of being dethroned by Google's continued Android development.

It's going to be hard to point fingers at Android when Dalvik gets a huge performance boost and Flash runs more or less flawlessly on all new Android devices.

<comment><USER2> Wow, I write this and then read this post: <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/05/13/entourage-edge>

Are you fucking kidding me? This would be like me criticizing iPhone OS by reviewing a third party manufacturer using Meizu's iPhone OS clone on a shitty tablet and passing it off as judgement on Android itself.

Gruber, when you get serious, hold your damn horses and write a real review on Google/VZW's official tablet. This other stupid stuff really doesn't paint you in a pretty light, especially paired with... your less absurd but equally Apple-grubbing content.

edit: COME ON. This _has to be_ a joke. It's not even a damn tablet. It's a dual screened, hinged device with a e-ink screen and a regular LED screen.</comment></comment>


A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography (v0.3) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/cryptobook/draft_0_3.pdf <comment><USER2> Video lectures with this textbook at "Online Cryptography Course" [https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/courses/OnlineCrypto/](https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/courses/OnlineCrypto/)</comment>


Ask HN: How can I get the most out of SICP? - <AUTHOR> I've heard so many people highly recommend Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, and say that it changed their complete view on programming, that I've decided to dive into it for the first time. I've been looking into the MIT OpenCourseWare to use a basis, and I've heard good things about the video lectures as well.  I have a time frame of about two months to work through it, although I hope that it won't that long; there are other things that I want to work on during my break.<p>So my question is fellow HNers is do you have any suggestions for how I can get the most out of this book? Are there any concepts or sections that I should pay particular attention to? Are there resources that would help me understand it better?  Thank you. <comment><USER2> You're going to be tempted to skip exercises because you think you understand the exercise or it is not applicable to you. Don't fall into this trap, as we humans are notoriously bad at judging what will and will not be useful for our own learning. Do all the exercises.

The two month time frame seems very optimistic unless SICP is one of your only responsibilities. It's my understanding that most semester courses that use/used the book usually never even get/got through the last chapter.

You might consider reading How to Design Programs (HtDP) as an alternative or supplement to SICP. The authors of HtDP have published a paper comparing the two works (mostly detailing the perceived shortcomings in SICP that motivated them to write HtDP in the first place). Read it here: <http://www.ccs.neu.edu/scheme/pubs/jfp2004-fffk.pdf>.

Good luck. :)

<comment><USER3> However, do skip some of the more difficult/theoretical exercises, if you feel they are over your head. As usual, doing half of the exercises probably provides 80% of the benefits. As an example of a question you may want to skip: the proof question 1.13 asks you to give requires some mathematical background knowledge concerning how to go about proving something. Don't let those questions demotivate you if you lack that knowledge.

<comment><USER4> Strongly disagree. You should be able to do exercise 1.13. Knowing how to prove something is very valuable. I remember spending several hours trying to do exercise 1.13 and when I finally got it I had learned a great deal about proving, induction (altough I didn't know its name) and manipulation of exponentials.

The exercises that are hard for you are exactly the exercises that you'll learn a lot from.

<comment><USER5> Hm, the way I read it, "Confusion" wasn't suggesting to skip the exercise because it's hard, but because it assumes specific mathematical knowledge which, strictly speaking, is unnecessary to master SICP concepts.

As you point out, it may still be _useful_ to have that knowledge, and if you have the time and the mathematically-inclined brains, it may be a skill worth learning... but I feel that it shouldn't be _required_ to successfully learn the concepts in SICP. SICP is hard enough as it is, no need to get sidetracked if you don't absolutely have to.

(I realize this comment may bring all the "programming is math" fans out of the woodwork, but so be it. :-)

<comment><USER4> Learning what a proof is is valuable for programming too. Many people don't see a difference between a proof and an argument. It is valuable to learn the difference between "This is why this program is correct" and "Here are some reasons why this program is probably correct".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You won't get through it "properly" in two months. It really is mind-changing, and that takes time. You _must_ do the exercises - pretty much all of them - because that's where your thinking gets changed. Reading the text sets you up for it, but that's like reading about weight-training. It has very little effect unless you actually do it.

Without knowing more about what you already do or already know, I can't advise paying particular attention to one thing or another, but simply to repeat - the benefit is in the exercises. The text reads clearly and simply, but the exercises are where you put in your part of the effort.

EDIT: corrected typos.

</comment><comment><USER7> The way it worked for me was that I was familiar (but not good) with common lisp. So, to get me going, using CLTL[1] as reference, I watched the videos first. Its about 20-24 hours worth of watching. Following this I started reading the book and implementing the exercises and the projects in the chapters (register machine, logic programming etc.) in Common Lisp. That required me to understand the concepts well enough to port the scheme stuff to common lisp. This way I ended up learning Common Lisp with a decent grasp of Scheme.

Note that common lisp comes with a lot of stuff built in, but to do the above I stuck to a minimal subset.

Following this, it was fun to read OnLisp[2].

[1] <http://www.ida.liu.se/imported/cltl/cltl2.html>

[2] <http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> The video lectures and problem sets from the UC Berkeley course (CS 61A) taught by Harvey are very good (and freely available), although you will need to use Berkeley Scheme to get the most out of it. Two months is ambitious, but you can get a lot out of it in that time even if you don't finish.

<comment><USER9> Do you know how they compare to the original lectures by the authors? Or the MIT OCW lectures? I've been meaning to dive into SICP and trying to decide if I want to use a video supplement, and if so, which.

<comment><USER10> One of the good things about the MIT videos is that they don't have the amount of "administrative stuff" which the Berkeley lectures have (ie stuff about where this and that lecture will be next week etc etc). So the berkeley lectures could do with editing that out. OTOH I think Brian Harvey is a very good lecturer as are abelson and sussman. Sound quality on one or two of the MIT lectures is poor in parts. If you have time might not be the worst idea to watch both sets. Edition 1 of the book was current for the MIT videos whilst edition 2 is current for the berkeley series.

<comment><USER11> Definitely agree about the administrative stuff! Stanford videos have that, too. (At least the ones I've seen.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A tome like SICP takes time to get through it, and I think it's more because of the way our brain functions more than anything else.

My strategy when working through the book was to slowly chip away at it, sometimes non-sequentially, and let the ideas slowly stick. When I say, non- sequentially, I mean to say that I would look at all the chapters, think about my current knowledge base, and then try to attack as many chapters at once.

Many will disagree with this style of learning, and the initial confusion lasts longer than I'd like, but eventually, all the thoughts just suddenly click.

That said, SiCP was a totally different beast, where the knowledge had to be accumulated and used throughout the book.

I think the most efficient way, would be to read each chapter multiple times first, trying to get key ideas (not everything) to stick.

Then proceed on to the problems, but set a time limit for each problem. Seriously, this book is so huge that one will never get all the problems done (i haven't, but that's part of the plan). Go search for some answers to easier questions, tackle those of roughly the same level of difficulty, then move on to more difficult questions, never obsessing over the fact that you couldn't solve a problem.

Because many of the ideas are one step removed from "everyday programmer", investing heavily (you be the judge) in the problems alone won't be worth it.

The best thing that I did however, was to "leave some questions in the tank" and re-read chapters at fixed intervals (say on every Monday), and attempt problems that I previously needed assistance to solve.

Oftentimes, I realise that I managed to solve it far more efficiently and with much cleaner code (and am constantly surprised by the difference in code quality compared side by side). Rewriting code in a different language also helps (eg: I'm doing Project Euler in python and Common Lisp)

Finally, I think you'll enjoy the journey much more if you pace yourself and give it at least a year to work it's magic.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would actually advise against the MIT lectures. The authors are much better recorded than live, as it were, and the only videos I could find are of very bad visual quality. The book is written so clearly that it requires no further explanation. But, hey, try them--maybe you'll like them.

Don't skip exercises. All the meat is in the exercises. I think there's a bunch at the end of Chapter 2 that make you write a lot of verbose code, to teach you stuff that you probably already understand if you've done OOP. The ideas explained in that section have since got more than their fair share of popularity in the mainstream. Anyway--I skipped those. But many others I thought I'd skip, only to come back to them later and wish I'd done them the first time.

<comment><USER14> The MIT lectures are super old - from the 80's I think. Berkeley's version of SICP has lectures that are much more up to date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a reading group starting up on the University of Reddit (<http://reddit.com/r/universityofreddit>) - the idea is you each go away and read a chapter, then come together to discuss what each person thought, and any problems they had.

I think this is a great way to motivate readers and tackle leaps of understanding.

The course website is here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/UniversityofReddit/comments/cktdq/cl...](http://www.reddit.com/r/UniversityofReddit/comments/cktdq/class_sicp_reading_group/)

</comment><comment><USER16> My advice? Take your time, do the exercises, re-read the stuff you didn't quite get, learning is not a speed race. Its a hard book.

</comment><comment><USER17> It took me several months to go through it, and I skipped the exercises in the last chapter (and some others). Giving yourself a timeframe is not a good idea in this case, as you would probably spend around one year if you do all the exercises.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's how I went about it. First, I read Abelson & Sussman's super-condensed SICP article, <http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6064>

Then I ordered the book, and during the month it took to arrive (back in the 80s), worked out the themes from the article in programs of my own. When the book came in, it was extremely instructive to compare with how I'd tried to flesh out their ideas -- for example, I'd come up with a scheme to express dataflow pipelines by hooking up coroutines in continuation-passing style, inspired by their CPS-coded pattern-matcher; then the lazy streams in the book were a revelation -- a beautiful solution to the same problem, as a data abstraction instead of a pattern of control. (And then it was interesting to see how you could refactor the different solutions into each other.)

I'm not going to tell you to go about it the same way, but there is a principle there: struggling with a problem yourself before seeing how the masters do it, you're much better prepped to learn from them (and eventually you'll find yourself getting somewhere they didn't). Feynman emphasized this point.

Anyway, book in hand, I worked straight through doing most of the exercises and also related problems that'd occur to me along the way -- anything that piqued my interest. Again, going off on your own tangents is not to be scorned. The concepts or sections to pay particular attention to are the ones that interest you, yourself.

I spent 2-3 months, I guess, taking up all my hacking time. It was totally worth it, though nowadays there's _far_ more competition in easily-available worthwhile programming stuff to study. I've heard of some online study groups for SICP -- don't know if they're active.

<comment><USER19> This group is JUST starting right now. We're on week one:

<http://universityofreddit.com/v2/class.php?id=57>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks everyone for the responses. It looks like the general consensus is that while reading the book is important, also do the exercises, in different languages if possible, as that's where you'll really start to understand the concepts.

I'll have to take a look at the Berkeley videos to see how they compare to the MIT videos. I am however going to use them more as a supplement to help me understand sections I'm having trouble with, rather than going through them systematically.

As far as the timeframe of two months, two months is not a deadline to finish and completely comprehend the book. I understand that can take years. Two months is actually how much completely free time where I can concentrate on it before I have before I head back to college where one of my courses is using SICP as the textbook for the semester. I won't, however, be able to devote my full concentration to SICP as I would like to during the school year because I'll have other work that I need to do.Wow, thanks everyone for the responses. It looks like the general consensus is that while reading the book is important, also do the exercises, in different languages if possible, as that's where you'll really start to understand the concepts.

Thanks for your help everyone!

</comment><comment><USER20> I read it for a first time in a couple of weeks by skimming over the exercises and sections I didn't want to read.

Then, some months after that, I read it a second time but I did the exercise and read every section.

In SICP, the exercice aren't there to "only make sure you've understood". There are actually a lot of new content in the exercises.. I don't particularly like that because if you can't answer an exercise, well, there is no solution :p (Of course, you can browse the web, ask people, etc.)

Or sometime, it asks, eva-lua-tor thinks that, L. Hacker things that, who's right? So, you answer.. but how can you know you've got the right answer?

Anyway, this is a great book. In my opinion, the chapter based on the evaluator is the most important and the one that has the most impact on my day to day life.

</comment><comment><USER21> As others said: do the exercises. In response to your question about which sections to pay special attention to: the metacircular evaluator. As a slightly burned-out hacker, I often think of how much fun that was when I must motivate myself to write another line of code.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's people working through the class on my learning website, Curious Reef:

[http://curiousreef.com/class/structure-and-interpretation- of...](http://curiousreef.com/class/structure-and-interpretation-of-comp/)

There's already a lot of work available that others have posted which is handy if you get stuck or want to see other ways of solving the problem.

</comment><comment><USER23> do the exercises not only in Scheme, but also in your own favorite programming language. this will help you see differences in programming languages and also allow you to understand which concepts are language-independent and which ones are just an artifact of the particular implementation language

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not a huge fan of LISP (sacrilege to this board...) and read this long after being a pro dev, so I read for general concepts and supplemented elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER25> Watch Berkeley's lectures if you are starting out. They are superb.

</comment><comment><USER26> how do you get the most out of [computer book]?</comment>