Add Latency to Localhost - <AUTHOR> http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2010/12/14/add-latency-to-localhost/ A short post on using tc to simulate high latency connections on a local box. <comment><USER2> On FreeBSD and OSX, you can use ipfw:

        sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 50KBytes/s delay 100ms
        sudo ipfw add 1 pipe 1 src-port 80
        sudo ipfw add 2 pipe 1 dst-port 80

But don't forget to disable it!

        sudo ipfw delete 1
        sudo ipfw delete 2

</comment><comment><USER3> Mininet is a project at Stanford that provides an API to emulate a multi-node network on a single machine. It uses linux containers and namespaces for configuration/resource isolation.

Project page: [http://www.openflowswitch.org/foswiki/bin/view/OpenFlow/Mini...](http://www.openflowswitch.org/foswiki/bin/view/OpenFlow/Mininet)

Paper: [http://conferences.sigcomm.org/hotnets/2010/papers/a19-lantz...](http://conferences.sigcomm.org/hotnets/2010/papers/a19-lantz.pdf)

Other similar projects:

      * http://clownix.net/
      * http://www-x.antd.nist.gov/nistnet/

<comment><USER4> Closely related - <http://kerneltrap.org/node/467> \- FreeBSD network stack virtualization, though it seems to be RiP now.

It is (was) not the only implementation of the idea that is as basic as it is extremely useful for testing in complex network setups.

All network stack variables (i.e. settings and state) are gather in one big _struct_ and all network stack functions operate exclusively on the contents of this stack. Every process has one stack instance assigned to it by default and it may switch to another instance at any time. There are no changes to any socket-level API, all calls function exactly as before, but they are executed in the context of process' effective stack.

Process' default stack is inherited from the parent process, and this makes it trivial to run any existing application in a context of specific stack (by launching it from a process that selects desired stack and then does the _exec_ ).

At the bottom each stack connects to one or more network interfaces. Stacks may connect to the physical devices (multiple stacks per device is OK as long as it supports promiscuous mode), or they may connect to a virtual interface. Virtual interfaces in turn may have their inputs and outputs meshed together via hubs, switches or direct links, all of which may in turn be configured to emulate packet loss, latency, jitter and what not.

That's your basic network stack virtualization. Functioning version can be assembled from a forked Linux source in a couple of weekends. If only someone would bother submitting the patch after that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone know a good way to replicate this in Windows? Would be great to have a more user-like experience when working on my Rails app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Host the app on a local Linux VM perhaps?

<comment><USER6> This is what I do and it works perfectly. I use VirtualBox and can stop any of the servers at any time and reduce my memory/CPU footprint for other activities. VirtualBox also lets me configure the network easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do be aware that your linux loopback has an MTU an order of magnitude greater than ethernet, so your latency sensitive TCP startup times are not going to behave the same.

<comment><USER4>
      ip link set lo mtu 1500

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could anyone explain why that would be desirable? Is it to test out a website design that you are hosting locally, and you want it to "feel" right? Something else?

<comment><USER9> I've encountered bugs that were not reproducible due to the speed of local socket connections. I had to use a remote server to debug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> qdiscs in linux have always seems something of an underdocumented dark art to me. I've used HTB to slow down packets that I mark with iptable rules, but that's about as fancy as I can get. Does anybody know of some nice documentation about this stuff that isn't a decade old? ;)

<comment><USER11> This was apparently last updated in 2009:

[http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networ...](http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/netem)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those on FreeBSD dummynet was perhaps one of the most useful traffic shapers I've ever used. I had a router built on FreeBSD going strong for more than 3 years on an old pentium 90 that would route traffic like no ones business.

</comment><comment><USER13> iprelay too:

        iprelay -b30000 8000:localhost:80</comment>


Pixabay - Beautiful Public Domain Images - <AUTHOR> http://pixabay.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a wonderful resource. There are a ton of amazing Sharealike 3.0 images out there, and sites that let you search them (like <http://www.compfight.com>) but this is the only decent platform I've seen for finding CC0 licensed images which is great if you want to use high quality images without having to add attributions to your pages that use them.</comment>


PrivateCore - <AUTHOR> http://privatecore.com/

<comment><USER2> Cool concept, an encrypted in memory hypervisor, many relevant buzzwords used throughout the site. Yet the main questions that will probably be brought up include, is the source reviewable? at least the encryption portion and specifics on the encryption itself as today even major companies aren't trusted much when it comes to encryption.

<comment><USER3> Hi Josh. I'm a PrivateCore co-founder. Our initial customers are primarily enterprises or service providers, which have varying requirements with respect to source availability.

Some code will be open sourced, though some parts will remain proprietary. As for the crypto, we use an existing open source implementation that is widely used.</comment></comment>


CA DMV website cautions against using Netscape - <AUTHOR> https://cloudup.com/ip2Vk4LyIHB <comment><USER2> This site feels totally modern and up to date!

</comment><comment><USER3> use of time machines is highly inadvised</comment>


AngularJS 1.4 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ninja-squad.com/2014/12/15/what-is-coming-in-angularjs-1.4/

<comment><USER2> Should be titled "What's coming in AngularJS 1.4." Almost believed it was out already.</comment>


Elon Musk's SpaceX uses Linux in Starlink satellite system - <AUTHOR> https://androidrookies.com/elon-musks-spacex-uses-linux-operating-system-in-starlink-satellite-system/ <comment><USER2> This is an article on a reddit thread, but it doesn't seem to link to the source thread.

AMA: [https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/gxb7j1/we_are_the_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/gxb7j1/we_are_the_spacex_software_team_ask_us_anything/)

Highlights: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/gxypym/starlink_h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/gxypym/starlink_highlights_from_the_spacex_software_team/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone wonder what the risk of takeover is?

i.e. could a nation-state take control of a starlink network with sufficient code exploits?</comment>


Do you treat HN as a game? - <AUTHOR>

I just found it would be interesting whether you would associate hacknews as a game.
There's definitely a lot of community interactions and insightful knowledge flowing around HN, but at the same time, with the concept of karma points, do you treat the whole thing as a game?
do try to earn as many karma points as you possibly can?
are you consistently trying to improve your karma avg ratio?
do you strategically think before you post, and make sure your comments yield the most points?
or are there other ways you perceive HN?
I just find it fascinating because the simple concept of karma points, which is not really a virtual currency, all it is it's just a number, but somehow psychologically I feel like this number is important.
What do you guys think? <comment><USER2> Off-topic: it's good form to put "Ask HN:" in the title of an item like this. I see you've done so in the past - any reason why you stopped?

On-topic: An interesting question, and I'm sure some people do, but I don't. I want a technical forum that exposes me to new ideas and different points of view. I only pay attention to karma to try to gauge the nature of the community.

If you check out my submissions you can see that my interests don't align especially well, but there is some overlap.

<comment><AUTHOR> yea sorry about that, it was late night on the East Coast when I posted, so I guess I wasn't really thinking well, but I'll look out in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think exposing average karma as a metric reflects the values of the community: better to have insightful comments that lots of people find helpful than to spam the boards with as many posts as you can to see what sticks.

<comment><AUTHOR> but doesn't some spam post get more credit than intellectual discussions? Because lately I realized that something Sean Parker said about the Social Network movie got way more credit than it deserved as opposed to some interesting innovative hacking news some newcomer provides

<comment><USER4> The karma points a post earns only correlate with merit relative to the popularity of the discussion. A middling comment on a front page story might earn a dozen or more points, while a brilliant essay on in a four comment three point discussion may not even garner a single upvote.

But that doesn't make karma meaningless, it's still a great feedback tool for improving one's writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a theory that part of the reason why HN tends to distract people from work is that it's a substitute for hearing "Good job! Keep up the good work!"

Work life can be so unrewarding at times, so it's easy to use your HN karma score as a surrogate.</comment>


Does this guy still cook in SF? Would love to eat his food with an HN group - <AUTHOR> http://www.foodhacking.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I emailed him and didn't get a response yet... I vaguely remember emailing him last time I went to SF and also didn't get a response.

Are there any other molecular gastronomy places in town?</comment>


New Study Underscores Link Between Physical Pain and Social Rejection - <AUTHOR> http://news.columbia.edu/research/2370

<comment><USER2> A punch in the face will also result in feelings of both physical pain and social rejection.

I'm not sure if this should be surprising to everyone. The physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of our lives overlap and are interdependent. You can't isolate one state.

That said, pain is necessary for personal development, physically, emotionally and spiritually. It's such an obvious fact it's not worth belaboring. Without darkness you cannot have light.</comment>


David McCullough on the "history gap" - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304432304576369421525987128.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion

<comment><USER3> I'm a history teacher, with Master's degrees in both History and Education, and what McCullough says here deeply resonates with me.

History, though, is only part of what you are concerned with, as a high school teacher, and increasingly it is not the most important.

Take, for example, my student teaching experience. When I asked a supervisor whether I should focus on Industrialization or Urbanization, or whether I would have enough time to take a detour to discuss the "robber barons," I was told that it didn't matter what I taught them. It didn't matter if I never got to the Cold War, as was written in the curriculum map, and it didn't matter if we covered Vanderbilt but not Edison, or if I spent a week on the First World War but only a day on the Civil War.

"The only thing that matters is that you teach them how to write," she said.

You see, our school was being examined by the state (Connecticut), and our standardized test scores were low. History teachers were openly referred to as "secondary english teachers," and our purpose was to teach children to write essays with thesis sentences. Every week, we were to devote class time to writing lessons, go over things such as topic sentences, conclusion paragraphs, editing, grammar, etc. Never mind that the kids have nothing to write about, nothing to say, because they haven't actually engaged with the world in any meaningful way. They could have been writing VCR instruction manuals.

History isn't tested on standardized tests. It isn't tested because no one cares. Writing is important because it gets you a job. History never gets anyone a higher salary (with the possible exception of history teachers), and so who gives a shit?

You have no idea how demoralizing it was to see the subject I love, that I passionately believe in, degraded in this way. Who cares what you teach? It's all a bunch of useless bullshit anyway, right?

Our problem with history is a symptom of our problem with education, which is that we don't know what it's for. We don't know, or can't decide, why we still adhere to the classical, liberal form of education. When little Joan or Sam or Miguel looks up at us and asks why he has to learn about Thomas Edison, the administrators of our school systems have no idea what to tell them. They don't say that the world is more interesting, more vivid, more meaningful, when you understand how it works. They don't say that we only understand ourselves when we understand where we come from. They don't say that much of popular culture has roots in historical precedents, and that understanding historical references opens up a whole new level of cultural understanding. They don't say that all Americans have a civic duty to understand their own past, and they don't say that understanding the past is the only way to avoid repeating our worst atrocities.

They say that it will all help them get a good job.

And that's total bullshit, and the kids know it.

<comment><USER4> Well, I guess you were taught to bullshit well too. If the kids at the time don't know why they are learning something, they find out when they grow up.

If you are teaching them English writing, then perhaps that is a fault with you, your school, or something else.

Regardless, you still do teach them about what you said so your rant really makes little sense to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article paints the worst possible picture. I took a look at the actual data on the NAEP website for the questions about Brown vs. Board of Education, which the article claims only 2% of students understand. In fact, a majority of students were able to answer basic questions about the case.

You can see the detailed question results at <http://www.scribd.com/doc/58246319/Brown>

The summary is:

82% of test-takers correctly answered the "easy" multiple-choice question (identify the case from a quote) about Brown. 51% correctly answered the "medium" multiple-choice question (identify the case that Brown overturned).

The "hard" question was an essay question that asked "describe the conditions that this 1954 decision was designed to correct." The results broke out as:

47% Inappropriate 26% Partial 2% Complete 23% Omitted 3% Off task

That 2% Complete is the number the article quotes. Which I would describe as "2% of students had enough time, writing ability, and understanding of Brown v. Board of Education to complete a short-answer essay question under time constraints and to the full satisfaction of the scorer."

<comment><USER6> Thank you very much for taking the time to track that down. The facts are incontrovertible in this case, the article about the report is a bald faced lie. This is disappointing on many levels. It's not clear whether Brian Bolduc the article author or David McCullough the historian being discussed in the article is the perpetrator of this specific fraud, but it's egregious enough as to need to disregard all the conclusions of the article, just as we routinely disregard all the testimony of perjured witnesses. A pity since maybe there is something to what is being said. We can't use this article as a source for it though, it is tainted.

One good thing that came out of it is drawing attention to the actual study, [http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/main2010/2011468.a...](http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/main2010/2011468.asp), which shows that knowledge of history is getting better across the board.

In contrast to many federal web sites (census bureau being a notable example), that one is a pretty usable site. It has things like sample tests you can take and ways of examining national results on each test, even including sample written responses to essay questions indicating different levels of acceptability. I went through the 12th grade questions and a fair number of them are pretty hard. The "proficient" level is not easy and that only 1/4 of students are there is not so bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> History is a relatively easy subject to teach and learn, _once_ everybody agrees on what bits are important and should be taught. A hundred years ago we had this all figured out --we might have had an excessively narrow perspective on history, but at least we all agreed about it.

With the ongoing "death of God", as Nietzsche would put it, all the old certainties have been swept away without anything sensible to replace them. So the history syllabus has become a political battleground for partisans of all sorts of folks to play with. If students are forced to spend weeks at a time studying the dude who invented peanut butter or some dispute over bus seating, is it any wonder that the big picture gets lost?

As a first step, I would split history into two sections: "overall chronology" and "detailed studies". In "overall chronology" we'd study the basic flow of human history over the last five or seven thousand years, trying not to overly stress any particular event or group of people. Picture a giant wall chart with time along the _x_ axis and all the major human civilizations plotted up and down the _y_ , and then we sit down and learn the dates of key events. Start of the Han dynasty. Fall of Constantinople. Founding of Buenos Aires. Not worrying too much about what they _mean_ , though.

In the second, we could pay attention to the details. Individual people, events, what it was like to live at a given time. We could never cover the entire chart at a detailed level, but at least we'd know the details were still there.

<comment><USER3> You make some good points, but..."some dispute over bus seating?" I assume you're talking about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, widely considered to be the first major victory of the Civil Rights Movement? The one where a young 25-year-old preacher named Martin Luther King first rose to national prominence? The one where the non-violent protest tactics of groups like the SCLC, which would go on to dominate the struggle for civil rights until the 1970s, were given their first serious test on the national stage?

The problem with the approach you suggest is that students do not, and will not, care about or engage with material devoid of meaning and context. How will you get kids to memorize the "dates of key events" without getting them to care about "what they mean?" I can barely get my history classes to sit down.

History is all about meaning and context. Dates are inherently meaningless; it's the stories that history tells us about ourselves that give it worth. We need dates, and we need chronology; it just seems like your approach would lead directly to me (a history teacher) getting beaten up.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for giving me the opportunity to plug "The Children" by David Halberstam: [http://www.amazon.com/Children-David- Halberstam/dp/044900439...](http://www.amazon.com/Children-David- Halberstam/dp/0449004392/)

Instead of following the historical figures that you know best, such as King, it follows the students who were the ground troops in the civil rights movement. What Halberstam makes abundantly clear is how _dangerous_ what they were doing was. Simply, they could have been killed. Some of them very nearly were. And there were people killed, but they obviously weren't around for Halberstam to interview. The corollary to that is he drives home how naked some of the violence against the protestors was.

Something I took away is how sanitized the teaching of the civil rights movement has become. By doing that, we diminish what those young people actually did, and we conveniently forget how cruel humans can be.

Personally, I think history is best taught when it has a narrative. Hence, textbooks are not good at teaching history. Books with a focused topic - <USER2> hopefully implies a focused narrative - are much more compelling. I recognize that's probably not helpful to a high school teacher. I started reading history books, on my own, in college.

<comment><USER7> _Personally, I think history is best taught when it has a narrative. Hence, textbooks are not good at teaching history_

I disagree. Teaching history as a narrative is the most dangerous thing you can do with history, because there's always the temptation to shoehorn it into a narrative. Good guys vs bad guys. Heroes and villains. Plucky underdogs vs arrogant empires. The human mind is stupid, and there's only a certain number of narratives which "feel" right to us, and the moment you start reducing reality in its vast complexity so it sounds like a good story, you've lost most of what was going on.

For example, what you just said:

 _What Halberstam makes abundantly clear is how dangerous what they were doing was. Simply, they could have been killed. Some of them very nearly were. And there were people killed, but they obviously weren't around for Halberstam to interview. The corollary to that is he drives home how naked some of the violence against the protestors was._

What about the violence committed _by_ the protestors? Were there no evil acts committed by folks on the "good" side of this conflict? I assume there were (there always are) but these get left behind in the search of the simplified one-liner version of the "Civil Rights struggle" narrative.

History as narrative is more entertaining than real history, but it's also a lot less accurate. You might as well just watch Star Wars.

<comment><USER8> The civil rights movement was rare in that the protestors did not commit violent acts - at least not the ones that were followed. These were people who were committed to non-violence as a principle. Why this is true is an interesting discussion unto itself; they spent months studying non-violent protest and had to mentally and physically prepare themselves to be attacked and not retaliate. While I did not agree with their reasons all the time, I have to conclude that in this instance, the tactic of non-violence was extremely effective. However, I think it's only possible when there is already an existing culture of the rule of law - or, at least, lip service to it.

He does, however, give rather complete biographies of many of the people involved, and they were not saints. Several suffered from depression, one's behavior with women earned him scorn, and another's naked political ambitions were distasteful to many others. (That "one" was Marion Barry.)

Reading _one_ narrative is potentially dangerous. But when you read many books on a single subject, it allows you to compare and contrast what different authors say about the same thing.

Anyway, history textbooks are distilled from the kinds of books I'm talking about, so I find your complaint rather odd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember discussing this with a friend over 20 years ago when we were just starting college. Our thought _then_ was that "social studies" and "history" classes we'd had were, for the most part, garbage. Didn't matter what year/class it was, you'd inevitably end up at the end of the semester with about 3 days left and everything from the US Civil War to modern times to skip over.

Every year a different teacher would ask us about something from early 20th century, and we'd say we never learned that. Cause we hadn't. I had three different classes between middle and high school that kept covering the same historical periods (poorly) and the teachers mostly weren't really interested in it anyway.

I certainly can't imagine that institutionally things have gotten _better_. What I do envy now is kids who have the whole world at their fingertips, but I suspect the majority of them aren't being exposed to the learning and information potential available. They're just playing xbox and posting on myspace/facebook, like everyone else.

<comment><USER4> I guess you know most of the history now though. I wonder how that happened?

See, memories are bad too :P

<comment><USER9> I know a lot more than I was taught, because I went and read up on it myself. I didn't do it all in school - mostly later and as an adult. However, I think I largely got a love of learning _outside_ the classroom - very few teachers actually sparked any interest in learning, regardless of the subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Mr. McCullough's eyebrows leap at his final point: "And they're so badly > written. They're boring! Historians are never required to write for people > other than historians."

In my opinion, this is probably the biggest problem. History was almost always presented to me as a desiccated list of facts, dates, and sanitized "causes of events" that needed to be memorized so you could pass the test and move on. Few teachers seemed to be able to put any life into the subject, or present the subject as a large single picture instead of tiny disjoint sets of data.

I don't know what approach would have worked best to get a younger me more interested in history. Maybe something in the style of "The Island at the Center of the World" would have worked--I do find that readable and interesting now.

<comment><USER7> The way I was taught history (in Australia), it could have used a whole lot more lists of facts and dates.

Case in point: World War One. We spent weeks on that war. But we didn't learn how it started, or how it ended, or exactly who were the belligerents on both sides, or the key battles, or how it was eventually won. Instead we mostly sat around and read about how awful life was in the trenches for the soldiers -- surely important, but not at the expense of _actually_ understanding the war. "It was a stalemate for years, and then we mysteriously won" sums up the picture of the war that we got.

<comment><USER11> But we learned how WW1 started. It was when those arrogant/bumbling British generals sent in the brave ANZAC forces and despite the poor leadership - through the power of mateship and a donkey - they won the great military victory at Gallipoli.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it what we haven't learned, or what we've forgotten? I was taught a lot of history in high school, but like most things that don't get recalled very often, I've forgotten a lot.

Is that really the problem? Perhaps we don't reference history enough in modern society.

On the other hand, I have a lot of knowledge of topics that didn't exist back in a time when people were supposedly more historically literate.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've read some of his books yet I initially read his last name "McClure". I wonder how we'll reflect on our history after a decade of information overload? Seems like our ability to forget will get kicked into overdrive as a coping mechanism. Maybe reading a good history will be therapeutic.

</comment><comment><USER14> > This week, the Department of Education released the 2010 National Assessment > of Educational Progress, which found that only 12% of high-school seniors > have a firm grasp of our nation's history.

I wonder whether anyone ever wonder about the history of the rest of the world.

<comment><USER15> Maybe, but if the numbers really are so low for a relatively constrained topic like the 500 year history of one nation, expanding the scope to the entirety of human history seems like it's going to have even less impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >This week, the Department of Education released the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which found that only 12% of high-school seniors have a firm grasp of our nation's history. And consider: Just 2% of those students understand the significance of Brown v. Board of Education.

The "firm grasp" number seems really low, but it could certainly be changed by what that term means. As far as Brown v. Board, that number seems so low that I'm tempted to disbelieve it. Anyone have a link to the report?

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's the National Assessment of Educational Progess, "The Nation's Report Card: U.S. History 2010" which is the basis for the article.

[http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/main2010/2011468.a...](http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/main2010/2011468.asp)

</comment><comment><USER16> For what it's worth, a friend of a friend (Japanese, very fluent in both English and Japanese) was walking around during a return trip to Japan. She happened to be walking behind a couple of high schoolers.

"So... Apparently we had a war with America."

"Really, who won?"

"I... I guess they did."

Another friend (Japanese) visited the Holocaust memorial in Portland with me. She didn't know what the holocaust was, or that Jews had any involvement in the story of WWII whatsoever.

So, it could be worse.

<comment><USER17> Thats not ignorance so much as politics. In Japanese history they were the victims of WWII, their army went to china as a peace keeping force and then they were nuked.

<comment><USER7> That's a bit of an exaggeration, but yes, it's fairly safe to say that the Japanese view of World War 2 is a little... well, foreign.</comment></comment></comment>


What Men and Women Consider Hardcore Gaming Are Not The Same - <AUTHOR> https://quanticfoundry.com/2018/08/01/casual-hardcore/ <comment><USER4> Ignoring the graphs, curious how much of this is just a response to community. Anecdotes abound, beware.

Even as an older (for gaming, anyway) white male, the community in some competitive games is just really unappealing - it basically reminds me of middle school, and I guess I'm not really into that anymore. Lots of things said just to get a reaction (e.g. racial slurs), lots of weird discussions about women, lots of puffed chests the second there's an opportunity to, etc.

I don't really have the time to be competitively good at any of these games, and the community kinda sucks unless you _are_ competitively good, so it's kinda like what's the point? At least with rec sports the community is generally nice even if you're terrible (probably because you're in-person).

Sure, you can just mute people usually. But if you're muting everyone all the time, you might as well just be playing a single-player game. You can just play with friends, but that requires you to have friends who haven't also gotten sick of these communities.

Conversely, the community in games more oriented towards completion/design are usually great - because your success doesn't detract from someone else's, and they're not usually depending on you for their own success. Feels much more like a community.

Anyway, my point being that I wouldn't be shocked to learn that women (and likely people of color) feel the same way - once you're not really part of that core group of young white men, competitive games start feeling really unappealing unless you're just really into the game itself.

<comment><USER5> My own experience feels different than yours like how friendship is different in some areas.

In the good community games usually things are not deep: people are nice but no one will really risk anything or inconvenience themselves for you.

In more "hardcore" games where everyone can be hostile and gain to fuck with you, finding people who help other has a lot more meaning. I'm used to play with a guild in multiple PvP oriented MMO: I know most of them will risk their hardly obtained gear to help. We have good relationships with some other guilds and know we'll all go out of our ways to help each other in different games. When you could kill new players, take their loot and camp their corpse, being one of those who don't but will help with some gear and tips can snowball months later. When you can scam and cheat people, getting a trustful trader reputation can mean a lot.

If everyone is nice, no one really is.

<comment><USER6> > If everyone is nice, no one really is.

...this sounds incredibly messed up. The good people might be harder to find in a nice crowd, but the experience of finding them is much nicer.

I can see how a friendship forged in the face of assholes would feel stronger, but I dont think it would necessarily BE a better friendship. Way too easy to be bound with someone that is just LESS of an ass.

This sounds like "yay Stockholm Syndrome" more than "here is a safe and stable source of friends", but I'm really glad you shared the outlook because it certainly explains a lot of people. Wow.

<comment><USER5> Not really Stockholm syndrome.

GW2 (experienced at launch for 6 months): awesome game to create random groups as everyone gains from it. Hard to be an ass and you get nothing but maybe some sick joy from it. Honestly: I did not get any huge wholesome experience with anyone: get in zome event group, kill some NPC, do some WvW against anonymous people.

Darkfall Online: pure PvP game with player looting. Being a bad person was really rewarding. So it was always awesome to find legitimely good people and go kick some villains ass. Or help defend your neighbours city (who you're usually PKing all day and competing for mobz) against some other bigger imperialist. As being a PK give you something you get player killers. And if you enjoy playing the hero you just got ennemies with the same tools you have, non scripted and maybe smarter / better than you. Once you've experienced this kind of MMO it is hard to get the same highs from other games.

<comment><USER6> > Once you've experienced this kind of MMO it is hard to get the same highs > from other games.

I really, truly, am trying to understand, so please bear with my slowness. I can see how it is really rewarding to find not-bad people in an environment that incentivizes really bad people. I don't see how that makes up for getting into such an environment in the first place, and certainly not why one would follow up the experience by seeking out similar environments.

People suck on average, so you want to give them every opportunity and incentive to demonstrate, so that you can find the "good" people? Note the selection bias - you're finding those people that are both NOT asshats but also interested in an environment that encourages asshats. Perhaps that's more rewarding than my habit of simply not having close friends at all, but it also seems far more punishing. Bland people can be exhausting, but evil people....they bring despair. To be in an environment that cranks up the frequency and demonstration of people getting joy from the misery of others...that sounds like a choice to endure needless pain and suffering.

[Pause for the irony of submitting that last sentence as part of an online discussion thread]

I just don't get it. Doubtless just a difference in personal tastes - <USER2> someone being a jerk around me bothers me just a tiny bit more, and someone being nice around me thrills me just a tiny bit less - but emotionally I'm failing to wrap understanding around your stance.

<comment><USER5> > I just don't get it.

My opinion only, I'm sure other people playing those kind of games will have other motivations. Those games are fun because (and it goes with the article) there is competition against other humans. If you don't get any pleasure in competing I can understand those games will never appeal to you.

The fact you can lose your gear or loot to other players add more stake to fights: when you win your brain is flooded with natural drugs. When losing you have even more drive to get back to your opponent. Fighting against humans feels a lot more rewarding, and usually if you lose it is not because of "some bullshit game mechanic on this boss": it means you have to get better (at the fight part, getting gear part, the diplomacy part to have more people to bring etc.).

First time you get killed in those games is when you know if you'll stick or not: either you say "fuck anyone can come and steal my items", or you think "ok, if I can ambush this kind of person with 5 people, we could get free high level gear".

On an individual or small group basis, there are good benefits to play a bad guy so you see a lot of them. And I think this kind of environment foster deeper relationships: in the hate direction but also in the friendship direction. You get higher highs and lower lows. But the experience is rarely bland.

With MMOs you also get the inter-guild level and that's when politics, diplomacy, spying come into play. The best are grudges and alliances spanning more decades and multiple games. The funniest is when old guard guilds which hate each other end-up allying against new-comers kicking their ass.

You get some of those kind of stories with PvE only games but not as much. I may be wrong but I don't know of a lot of guild created in a PvE game spanning multiple games.

> evil people....they bring despair

Unless you're one of those putting an end to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The choice of graph here is really bad.

Basically the graph is trying to show two things at once - the difference between the categories and the difference between each category and normal. For multiple variables.

By showing a lot of information on one graph, it becomes hard to see any particular pieceof information.

If you are trying to show a comparison between two categories, it's better to normalise those two categories. If you want to show that being far from the centre of the bell curve is more significant (which doesn't come accross on this graph at all by the way), then factor that in when you normalise.

Two clear graphs are better than one bad one.

<comment><USER8> I honestly don't understand what they are plotting:

> So for example, the 74th-%tile in Competition among Hardcore gamers means > that the average Hardcore gamer scores higher on Competition than 74% of the > gamers in the full data set.

But together casual and core make up 78 % of the sample, so that the some hardcore gamers must have scores lower than the "hardcore average". Those hardcore gamers only make up 4% of the total sample, which means that 0.04/0.21 = 0.19 -> 19 % of hardcore gamers score lower than the hardcore average!

That's so skewed an arithmetic average is clearly of little use, but at the same time they talk about percentiles, so I don't know what's happening here, did they take the sample average and pretended it's the median?

<comment><USER9> Aren't you assuming (probably incorrectly) that all hardcore gamers rated Competition more highly than all core/casual gamers?

I'm not sure how much less weird allowing for that makes things, but your reasoning for concluding that hardcore gamers with lower Competition scores than the hardcore average make up only 4% of the sample isn't valid.

For example, if half of the hardcore gamers (around 10.5% of the sample) are above the hardcore average and half below, that would put about 81% of the nonhardcore gamers (about 63.5% of the full sample) below the hardcore average and the rest above (about 19% of the full sample).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Makes me think of my home... my son is a "hardcore gamer", by anyone's definition. He doesn't recognize his mother as a gamer at all, despite her spending 10-20 hours/week gaming. She's mostly doing puzzle games on her iPad, so that's not "real gaming".

So there's a fair bit of gender and cultural bias in the very idea of "gamer".

I don't play video games, myself, for the same reason I don't shoot heroin directly into my eyeballs. I know I have a problem, so I avoid the problem.

<comment><USER11> "I don't shoot heroin directly into my eyeballs"

casual...

<comment><USER10> A few years ago, I had a medical problem (retinal vein occlusion) that had to be treated for a while with monthly injections directly into my eye. The drug used (Avastin) was originally developed for colon cancer treatment - <USER3> prevents the regrowth of tiny veins, which leads to a lot of very interesting uses.

So the day of my first injection, I went to a Rolling Stones concert with my spouse. And I don't care what sort of hardcore Keith Richards is, I'm pretty sure he wasn't shooting chemotherapy drugs directly into his eyeball before the concert!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> New candidate for Most Confusing Chart of 2018 right here folks:

[https://quanticfoundry.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/overal...](https://quanticfoundry.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/overall_casual_hardcore.png)

Even the explanation doesn't help:

> _In this chart below, the y-axis is showing the percentile rank of each > motivation. That 50th-%tile line represents the average among the 350,000+ > gamers who have completed the Gamer Motivation Profile. So for example, the > 74th-%tile in Competition among Hardcore gamers means that the average > Hardcore gamer scores higher on Competition than 74% of the gamers in the > full data set._

I genuinely don't think there's anything useful that can be said here at all without knowing what fraction of gamers make up the different catagories. Beyond that, all we can say for sure is that "hardcore" gamers like gaming more. Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER13> The female logic I can follow here: Once you play hardcore, i.e. more intense, just having a story will get boring soon. So they add other competencies.

It's a little confusing for me, why just playing skill competition shouldn't get boring for men as well. Adding story based components for a more indepth experience would also sound reasonable for me.

So I wonder if self-assessment is really a good way to analyse the behaviour here. It might be that men don't mention that they care about community/story as much, while actually they do as well when they heavily invest time and energy into a single game.

</comment><comment><USER14> Setting aside the graph issues, the data is very interesting.

Much of game development for the triple-A space seems aimed at the hardcore male gamer demographic, whether intentional or not. Could a studio instead build a game that focuses on entirely different categories and as a result attract a bigger market that isn't being addressed?

Make a game that's fun, but focus on design, discovery, completion, fantasy. Don't discourage male players, but make a game that ticks all the boxes for most female players. Market it subtly for both genders, trying to hook female gamers.

I hope someone is trying to do this.

<comment><USER15> Game studios are already focusing on different target demographics, it just that people tend to not see it because when a product change target demographic it also tailors (in a market competition way) all other aspect of putting a product to market and successfully earning profit on it. Those changes also effect how game studios compete against each other, and major developers for one type might be a minor actor in the other.

Triple-A games and block buster action movies has very many similarities. A lot of focus is on first day sales with flashy and short term advertisement that get concentrated to compete against the competition that tries to do the same thing. For some reason the young male with disposable income is a core demographic for this kind of product. In contrast Candy crush, Facebook games, romantic comedy and drama movies share a different target demographic of middle age women. If I remember right then production for that demographic has surpassed that of triple-A, with mobile games being a massive industry.

Why does marketing when targeting for men or women differ? Why does the purchasing pattern differ. I don't know and there are movie and game studios that do try to target all gender and all age demographics with the same product, using a singe marketing style and single platform. Maybe that works but lets not forget that game studios that targeting other demographics than young male with disposable income really do exist. They just don't call themselves triple-A, just like how a romantic comedy don't usually get described as a block buster. If I make a guess I would say it has something to do with marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've played almost every competitive pc game in the last decade and I've never came across one where when a female voice gets on the mic, the atmosphere of the game doesn't change. Not every individual match of course but dam, I would NOT want to be a female online gamer. Seperate note: I've been to LANs and the mood is quite different, it is unfortunate to see the gender divide and most competitive (semi-pro at least) guys really want to see that scene improve.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was rather unimpressed with the test as well as the graphs. I scored myself low in every category because I find it hard to rate any one aspect high. I'm paraphrasing: How important are explosions? How important is competition? How important is exploring?

I can't rate any of these things high, in and of themselves. It requires a well balanced mix of things to make a great game. Breaking everything down to individual components makes it seem I am much less engaged in games than I am.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is wrong, even their entire concept of casual/mid/hardcore gamer is terrible, you can't just define it like that.

<comment><USER19> I agree. Much better questions would be about measurable things (e.g 'how many hours do you spend playing per week' or 'how often have you taken part in an organized tournament over the last year'). That different people use the same words for slightly different things is as new as the stone on the ground.

<comment><USER20> "how often have you taken part in an organized tournament over the last year" would measure whether you like competition. It does not even measure how much you play nor how much you are invested.

I think it is more useful to keep competitive and hardcore as two different words.

<comment><USER19> Indeed, it doesn't measure the same. The examples were meant more as an example how to ask questions that different people answer the same way (given the same situation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Came here to whinge about the choice of graphs, not disappointed that others beat me to it.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to se this broken down by age, too. They refer to what terms mean to "men" when i often wondered if they were talking to "boys"

<comment><USER23> They do offer an "Age Report" which costs $2499:

[https://quanticfoundry.com/age-report/](https://quanticfoundry.com/age- report/)

Here's a sample chart showing how "Competition" ranks by age:

[https://quanticfoundry.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/Compet...](https://quanticfoundry.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/Competition-Regression-Chart.png)

<comment><USER24> I honestly thought you were joking. Their data presentation wasn't good, who would pay this???

<comment><USER25> >who would pay this???

Enough people to keep them in business. If you're planning a major product launch, $2500 for a market research report is pocket change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Warning: lies with bars that don't start at 0.

<comment><USER27> Considering "0" in this case is the 50% mark and the graphs show equal distances from that 50% mark this looks legit to me.

<comment><USER28> The graphs start/end at the 20th/~85th percentiles rather than 0th/100th, which makes the differences seem larger than they are.

<comment><USER29> The graph starts at 50% where there is a thick line. It grows up and down until it contains the entire variation. The extreme values are not relevant.

It is a pretty standard format, and this "warning the graph does not start at 0" kneejerk is tiring. (What would you expect a graph with both positive and negative values should look like?)

<comment><USER28> If there would be no data point below/above 20/85, then it might be warranted to truncate it, but that's clearly not the case, in fact, by definition, there is 20% and 15% of the data respectively.

The bars starting from the median (50th percentile) are also a pretty meaningless visual indicator. E.g. the bars for competition visually indicate that men would be twice as competitive, but in the graph without the bar and including the 0th/100th percentile the difference is much less pronounced:

[https://quanticfoundry.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/hardco...](https://quanticfoundry.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/hardcore_comparison-650x326.png)

[https://i.imgur.com/P9M7AnR.png](https://i.imgur.com/P9M7AnR.png)

I find that especially damning as lots of these gamers are probably not familiar with statistics, so they might indeed draw extreme conclusions from these graphs merely due to the way it is represented.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Protect Your Google Analytics From Getting Hacked  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kissmetrics.com/protect-analytics-from-hacking/

<comment><USER2> Thinking that filtering hostname by regular expression "larslofgren\\.com" would protect the account is a very common newbie mistake. It would still allow requests from e.g. larslofgren.com.example.com. The correct regular expression to match the domain would be "^(www\\.)?larslofgren\\.com$". To match other subdomains, "^(\w+\\.)*larslofgren\\.com$" can be used. Or, you can use other filters with options that require "exact match" or "ends with". (Sorry if those terms are not correct or accurate, I'm not using Google Analytics in English.)</comment>


Can Psychiatry Turn Itself Around? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/can-psychiatry-turn-itself-around/ <comment><USER2> I'm a psychiatrist. It is always amazing to me that despite four years of medical school, six years of residency and fellowships, and four board certifications, the assumption is that I have no idea what I'm talking about and have evil motives.

There are fair criticisms of psychiatry, there are bad psychiatrists, but mostly there are crappy generalizations. Good psychiatrists have an understanding of what medications can and cannot do, and a well-rounded view of the person they are treating as a whole human being.

I work with the mentally ill who are involved in criminal justice, both juveniles and adults. I can assure you, having more psychiatrists would help a lot of people.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious what you make of the claims Robert Whitaker makes in "Anatomy of an Epidemic" and elsewhere? Psychiatry comes off looking quite bad in his analysis and he is far from the only critic of the profession. My attempts to find convincing rebuttals of his claims from Psychiatrists have so far drawn a blank.

In a nutshell for those not familiar with the book, he presents convincing evidence that most psychiatric medicines have no significant short term benefits over active placebos and in fact worsen long term outcomes and that the profession has been complicit in presenting unsupported hypotheses about chemical imbalances in the brain causing conditions such as depression as established fact and in pushing drugs as the primary means of treatment without sufficient evidence of their efficacy and largely ignoring worrying evidence of long term harm.

I'll admit to having a pre existing suspicion of psychiatry stemming from taking a degree in psychology in the UK but after reading this book and digging more deeply I have to say it looks far worse for psychiatry than I previously imagined.

<comment><USER4> It looks like meta-analyses published after that book support the efficacy of anti-depressants, are you familiar with this evidence?

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

<comment><USER3> This seems to be a fairly balanced (and pretty long!) review of the evidence from Scott Alexander who is a psychiatrist (I believe) which comes down on the side that the balance of the evidence is that SSRIs do have an effect that can't be explained purely as active placebo: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/ssris-much-more-than- yo...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/ssris-much-more-than-you-wanted- to-know/)

Here's another 2014 article leaning the other way by Irving Kirsch, one of the more prominent researchers to question the evidence for anti depressant efficacy: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/)

In _Anatomy of an Epidemic_ Robert Whitaker details many of the problems around the published studies that raise real concerns how bias free the remaining positive results of these studies might be. In addition, pretty much all of the discussion above is based around short term effects and perhaps the most worrying part of Whitaker's book for me is the suggestive evidence of devastating long term effects of many psychiatric drugs, SSRIs included.

Personally I think the bar should be rather higher for evidence of short term benefit for any drug than the 'optimistic' view of the evidence for SSRIs and especially in light of evidence of the drug making the condition it is supposed to treat significantly worse over the long term. Given that even proponents of SSRIs seem to accept that talk therapy is equally effective I know I'd rather take the drug and side effect free option but Scott Alexander gives a different take on that in his article, pointing out that drugs are much cheaper (and hence more profitable for both psychiatrists and drug companies as Whitaker points out in his book).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The last Psychiatrist I went to prescribed me 4mg of Klonopin a day for anxiety. The one before that prescribed me 40-50mg of Adderall a day for ADHD and about 600mg of Seroquel a night for sleeping problems. Both times I decided to quit going and tapered myself off.

There never really asked how I felt or seemed to care about me in any way shape or form. Just, "Here's your drugs, see you next month."

I have a horrible opinion about the entire profession of Psychiatry and at this point do not trust any of them in the slightest. I have not seen one in years. These days if I have a degenerated mental health in some form (whether that be inability to focus, sleep, or bouts of anxiety), marijuana is my go to solution.

<comment><USER6> Psychiatrists are a bit like chiropractors. They want to be seen as "doctors", but none of what they do has any scientific basis. Ever notice how psychiatrists just prescribe you random medications without knowing how, or even if, they work? The most damning fact is that I've never met anyone on psych meds who is doing really great.

<comment><USER5> I have noticed. Multiple times I've gone to a Psychiatrist and they have decided to try something because it's new and supposed to work, when the reality is they've only ever put 2 or 3 clients on it and it has been working for a few weeks, and the medication itself has only been out a year.

In addition, the worst times in my life were the times when I was taking psychiatric medications.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry this has been your experience, but please don't throw my entire profession under the bus because of it.

<comment><USER7> Your profession needs no help from marsrover to find itself under the wheels of a bus.

Every other medical revolution -- such as the rise of antibiotics, the pioneering of complex surgeries, and the advancements in medical imaging -- have resulted in a net reduction of people suffering from the ailments those tools are involved in treating.

Not so with psychiatry. The more drugs that are developed, the more illnesses are discovered to use them on.

You'll have to excuse the skepticism of some us who have seen loved ones suffer through debilitating, sometimes permanent side effects from drugs their psychiatrists prescribed. Your profession will get the benefit of the doubt when fewer of us are caring for those loved ones.

<comment><USER8> > You'll have to excuse the skepticism of some us who have seen loved ones > suffer through debilitating, sometimes permanent side effects from drugs > their psychiatrists prescribed.

What debilitating side effects are those? How does their frequency compare to side effects for non-psychiatric drugs and treatments?

<comment><USER7> You know it's odd: in all those years I spent helping my dad with his knees shot from zoloft induced weight gain or waking my roommate up because she drank too much to counteract the stimulants they prescribed to balance the benzos or sleeping next to a partner with a permanent, random, violent parkinsonian tremor caused by antipsychotics, I never considered doing a frequency analysis against the myriad of unrecommended non-psychiatric drugs and treatments out there.

Unfortunately, neither did any of their doctors, it would seem.

<comment><USER8> You know, it's odd: I don't recall asking you if you had personally done a study or frequency analysis. I recall asking a rhetorical question as a follow-up to a specific question about your claim in order to head off anecdote poker. Seems like you decided to jump straight into it, though. So, how many people have you had to deal with who had night terrors due to Chantix? Who became addicted to opiod pain medications? Who developed T2DM as a result of corticosteroid use? Who nearly bled out because of blood thinners?

You specifically demonized psychiatric medicine. You know people who have had pretty bad experiences with psychiatric medications but none who have had similar with non-psychiatric medications. My point is not to doubt that these side effects exist, but to illustrate that they exist for a host of non- psychiatric medications as well. Many of those are just as over-prescribed as psychiatric medications, and often by the same general practitioners over- prescribing them.

<comment><USER7> How does the existence of side effects in other medicines affect the status of psychiatric medicines and their percieved (in)effectiveness or their overprescription status?

You claim I'm 'demonizing' (i.e., being unfair towards) a subset of the medical profession when in fact I'm only relaying my personal experience and skepticism based on that. I don't doubt that there are a whole host of other medicines whose effictiveness is unknown and whose popularity is primarly due to its availability as free samples in doctor's offices and the U.S.'s notoriously effective prescription drug advertisement industry.

But to make that a point in this discussion seems like a misdirection more than an counter-argument. Two things can be bad at the same time independently.

To answer your questions: I dated someone with night terrors from Chantix, have a relative who is addicted to opoids (but who thinks no one knows when he's high at Christmas dinner), but have thankfully never had to deal with the last two.

Even still -- none of those latter series were prescribed to treat disorders discovered _after_ the invention of the drug itself. This is the primary point of skepticism: horrible side effects for well-advertised drugs for disorders we just recently discovered affecting, what was astutely noted by another commentor, the most complex organ of the body.

Many psychiatric medications are an excellent example of 'when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.'

<comment><USER8> > How does the existence of side effects in other medicines affect the status > of psychiatric medicines and their percieved (in)effectiveness or their > overprescription status?

> You claim I'm 'demonizing' (i.e., being unfair towards) a subset of the > medical profession when in fact I'm only relaying my personal experience and > skepticism based on that. I don't doubt that there are a whole host of other > medicines whose effictiveness is unknown and whose popularity is primarly > due to its availability as free samples in doctor's offices and the U.S.'s > notoriously effective prescription drug advertisement industry.

Because you singled out and attacked psychiatrists and psychiatry as if there were something inherent to that field of medicine and that class of medications that is not present in other fields and types. You specifically said:

>> Every other medical revolution -- such as the rise of antibiotics, the pioneering of complex surgeries, and the advancements in medical imaging -- have resulted in a net reduction of people suffering from the ailments those tools are involved in treating.

>> Not so with psychiatry. The more drugs that are developed, the more illnesses are discovered to use them on.

That is not merely relating your experience. That is throwing a particular medical specialty under the bus for what are in fact widespread issues with medical practice.

> Even still -- none of those latter series were prescribed to treat disorders > discovered after the invention of the drug itself. This is the primary point > of skepticism: horrible side effects for well-advertised drugs for disorders > we just recently discovered affecting, what was astutely noted by another > commentor, the most complex organ of the body.

Are you claiming that there were no mental disorders until the advent of psychiatric drugs? That a subset of disorders are just marketing ploys by a psychiatrist-industrial complex?

<comment><USER7> It's here you might benefit from the book:

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness

To explain further the unique situation that mental health drugs present. You might benefit especially from the notes section, to which his citations refer.

Am I saying there is a conspiracy between psychiatrists and pharmacuetical companies? Were it only so simple! There are a myriad of complex reasons why we're in the situation we're in -- but claiming that the situation is not unique, that my discussion of my personal experience and the research behind it is somehow a 'demonization' of an otherwise unremarkable industry belies both the thesis of the article and experiences of millions of patients.

<comment><USER8> > To explain further the unique situation that mental health drugs present.

...

> claiming that the situation is not unique, that my discussion of my personal > experience and the research behind it is somehow a 'demonization' of an > otherwise unremarkable industry belies both the thesis of the article and > experiences of millions of patients

You are saying it is unique, I am saying it is not. How am I misrepresenting the thesis?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We're all aware that most of the drugs that are common in the profession have serious side effects.

I'm glad the author called for his colleagues to focus more on the whole body, since realistically lifestyle and nutritional changes can have as profound effects as drugs, with no side effects.

I tend to think subclinical deficiencies in various nutrients can play a big role. Most people are already aware of the imporant brain benefits of Vitamin D and Omega 3, but there's others.

Tryptophan:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405680/#RSTB201...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405680/#RSTB20120109C25)

Lithium:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/opinion/sunday/should- we-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/opinion/sunday/should-we-all-take- a-bit-of-lithium.html)

Uridine:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3080753/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3080753/)

Magnesium:

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary- psychiatry...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary- psychiatry/201106/magnesium-and-the-brain-the-original-chill-pill)

NAC:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3044191/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3044191/)

<comment><USER10> Lithium, uridine... no side effects? You must be joking.

Even at subclinical dosages there are sometimes side effects from those.

Dietary changes have a ton of shoe effects as well. Even the dieteticians cannot really find precise enough consensus on these.

<comment><USER9> As the article mentions, the dosages of lithium that are naturally in water tend to be well below the levels that we're familiar with in prescription lithium. (Less than 1/1000th the amount)

But if lithium is more like a micronutrient, then long term administration of low dose lithium would be much better than temporary use of prescription dosages, and have very few side effects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Had a doctor prescribe two meds once, then a few weeks later asked me how one of them was working. I was honestly confused by the question, since I have no idea how one drug is working when I've only ever taken it in tandem with something else. The very question indicates at best an unacceptable level of indifference, at worst outright incompetence.

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't that imply that the second drug might just be there to ease side effects of the first? Regulate hormonal levels or blood pressure, or any other functions that might not be directly related to how effective the other one is but simply keeps everything in order? I get what you're saying, but incompetence is a bit of an extreme conclusion to draw from you not knowing what your prescription is meant to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There seems to be a huge gap between what psychiatrists believe and how psychiatric knowledge is presented to the general public.

For example, I'm not aware of any _scientific_ evidence that depression is qualitatively different from being unhappy, or that depression can't be caused by events that would make a typical person unhappy, or cured by the opposite. And I'm fairly certain that very little such evidence exists, because this is not the concern of psychiatrists, they just want to treat the person, not define categories per se. But I believe that psychiatrists allow the public to form this flawed understanding because they think it will lead people to treat people with depression with more sympathy and treat depression like a real problem. To me the more honest approach would be to simply say that unhappiness is a real problem and any approach or treatment that works should be considered.

<comment><USER14> If you'd look you'd find plenty of evidence of the sort that you think doesn't exist. Try a popular book like Against Depression as a starter. I think that the existence of such evidence also invalidates the rest of your prejudices that you express.

<comment><USER13> I don't have time to read every book out there, so when I look for answers to questions like this I look for sources that are authoritative, that is, sources that summarize the majority opinion in a field. The book you recommend doesn't seem to be that, and so I'm not convinced that it's worth reading. Are there particular studies in the book that specifically address whether depression is qualitatively different from unhappiness? Does the book cite mainstream opinions by psychiatrists and if so, what opinions does it cite?

<comment><USER14> This is not secret information, some key google terms may be "biology of depression" or something like that.

Just one piece of the literature that you might find convincing (not sure if its from that book or another) that you might find convincing is that there are structural differences in the pre-frontal cortex that can be seen under a microscope. The biological basis of depression is something that's so well established that strident doubt of it means that you can't be troubled to look for anything. It's like being convinced that evolution can't possibly be true because biologists can't be trusted.

<comment><USER13> I think that a "biological basis" means something different to you than to me. How exactly do these studies show that depression is different from being unhappy? Did they study the brains of merely unhappy people and find no such biological differences? Again, in my understanding psychiatrists and researchers make no attempt to differentiate between depression and unhappiness because they have no reason to make this distinction.

I'm going to assume that your argument is that if depression is caused by biological factors then it must be treated differently from unhappiness that is caused by life events. But in that case you will have to explain how this is consistent with the fact that "...depressive episodes are strongly correlated with adverse events..."[0]. This fact seems more consistent with either reverse causation (depression causes biological changes) or that depression can have multiple causes, and can occur in the absence of a biological cause.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder#Psyc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder#Psychological)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Most drugs on the market today have side effects that are serious to most people. Also the fact is that now a days it seems that almost all kid have "ADHD" or "ADD" and are getting put on stimulants for it. I don't get it at all. I was put on antidepressants when I was young and it really could have fucked me up if my parents kept listening to my doctor.

<comment><USER16> ADHD is overdiagnosed _and_ under diagnosed. (It's just _badly_ diagnosed, really.)

On the one hand, parents get their kids prescribed stimulants (which necessarily entails a—usually fake—ADD diagnosis) for the same reason university students go pick up illicit stimulants: they think it'll "make" them study. That is not the problem that ADHD causes, nor is that the benefit stimulants provide, but it's what parents _think_.

On the other hand, many people only discover as adults that they've had ADHD their entire lives, and have suffered unnecessarily through 3+ decades of being unable to motivate themselves to do homework/projects before they're overdue, or practice anything, or focus on reading rather than (badly) multitasking five different things, or put themselves to bed before 4AM, or even remember half the things they need to bring with them when they leave the house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." \- Jiddu Krishnamurti

</comment><comment><USER18> If Psychiatry wants to "turn itself around", it needs to do some house cleaning.

In a recent "skeptic" magazine [1], Harriet Hall, M.D. had this to say about the situation:

"Psychotropic drugs are far from ideal. They don't work well for everyone, and they can sometimes cause devastating side effects. But they do save lives, and they do allow some patients to lead a more-or-less normal life. _They are the best we have at the moment._ " (emphasis added)

[1] [http://www.skeptic.com/magazine/archives/21.1/](http://www.skeptic.com/magazine/archives/21.1/)

This is an apology for the status quo, and distracts from the main issue. My girlfriend is one of the ones for whom "psychotropic drugs" don't work at all - in fact, I believe that the psychotropic drugs that she's been prescribed have a lot to do with her present predicament. Haldol - sold as an anti- psychotic - is well known to cause the condition it supposedly treats. Dr. Hall states that these drugs "save lives", but I wonder what the ratio of "lives ruined" to "lives saved" is.

There are non-psychotropic drugs that have been very helpful for my girlfriend, but her psychiatrists don't know to use them. I've spent a few hours today revising my latest petition to the courts asking them protect my girlfriend from the palliative treatments that she has been ordered to endure. The main thrust of my argument is that the medications aren't working because they do not address the causes of her condition. The causes are perfectly obvious to me, but the doctors have all been "shooting in the dark", hoping that the next pill will work better than the last one.

I suspect that "exhaustion" is related to most psychiatric problems. New research linking psychosis to an inability to produce cortisol is a good clue: [https://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2016/june/stress- hormon...](https://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2016/june/stress-hormone-link- with-psychosis)

</comment><comment><USER19> Psychiatry's trouble is that it tries to treat emotional problems using drugs.

That's also the entire point of psychiatry.

It's in a crisis because "stabilizing" people by numbing their brains does nothing to help them face their problems. A profession of cleaners whose main technique was to sweep everything under the rug would also face crisis at some point.

<comment><USER20> Thats not the problem, its a tool to solve a situation. If someone is emotionally suffering so much as to not perform a job, not get out of bed, talking with them will not save their lifes. Treating the symptoms is one very legitimate way of dealing with a disease.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Psychiatry programs attract medical students with lower board scores and > fewer academic honors on average compared to other specialties.

It sounds like a self-reinforcing problem. Psychiatry's bad reputation leads to it having less qualified practitioners, thereby justifying the poor reputation.

I personally do not place much value in the field. It seems to monopolize on creating problems where none existed, and thereby increasing profits. In particular, the fact that most treatments seem to be lifetime is suspicious.

<comment><USER22> Working as a psychiatrist is hard. Reimbursement is low, and many serious patients do not have private insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting that the author does not cite anything describing the resounding success of psychiatry...

<comment><USER24> Still it was more honest than the forensic odontologists' assessment of their profession.

[https://theintercept.com/2016/03/25/in-las-vegas- embattled-f...](https://theintercept.com/2016/03/25/in-las-vegas-embattled- forensics-experts-respond-to-scandals-and-flawed-convictions/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The future is really about making advance in understanding the human brain and neurosciences. If AI could be really good at anything, it's really about making solid steps in psychology and have opportunities to stomp down myths.

</comment><comment><USER26> Doesn't scientology have some kind of weird self-declared feud with psychiatry? I wonder if they've perhaps been sowing FUD whenever and wherever possible.

<comment><USER18> Last week I posted a section [1] from Robert Whitaker's book _Anatomy of an Epidemic_ about how Scientology was probably used to deflect attention from the ineffectiveness of commonly used drugs.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12222898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12222898)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The basic lie that psychiatry is based upon, is that there is a sickness where there is suffering. Not neural phenotype, that yes can suffer, but have been useful for various enterprises and endeavor of humans kind. Manic-Depressive where our "suicidal" explorers, alcoholics stopped us from being nomadic, gays pressured into churches formed the first institutions and created contract security. The list continues near endless. If psychiatry would be a honest science, it would look upon cause and effect, asking what did this or that creatures side effect accomplish do to pay the ferry-woman. And can we optimize that- can we create creature constellations which produce new ideas like a machine. But it does not want to know, it wants to heal, which it can not heal as long as it cant resequence DNA in a living human. It doesn't even want to know the possible consequences if it could cure.

Do not interpret this statement as a general dismissive of proper treatment. Treatment of some neuronal constitutions allows some humans to live in this society. But i want to know what society trades personal meh-ness for.

<comment><USER28> I honestly have no idea what you are talking about here.

<comment><USER29> He's riffing on pop psych theories about the "warrior gene" and suchlike. I'm pretty sure there were institutions predating Holy Mother Church.

<comment><USER27> Disliking complexity, are we? And having a warrior gene, is actually something worthy of treatment in current society. Warriors, are useless today and will be for the foreseeable time. If there is such a gene, that shapes its owners brain in such a way.

But the main point is, that hunting for local optima of personal happiness, is sacrificing the upholding or even gain regarding personal happiness in the future. And psychiatry is neither cartographic why and for what society became composed of what it is and is neither offering constellations society could become.

BRB Got to go to Turings Barbershop. Best haircut in the city. Though sometimes conversation gets stuck on who shaves the barber.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HN: Here and then gone, flag experiment over? - <AUTHOR>

I don't see the flag feature, introduced yesterday, anymore.  Perhaps it didn't serve its intended purpose. <comment><USER2> You can see it in the comments view if you click "discuss."

</comment><comment><USER3> pg made it less obtrusive: See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227105>

<comment><USER4> It is good that "discuss" and "flag" are no longer next to each other.

I "discuss" a lot, and almost accidently clicked "flag" many times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can only see the flag link for headlines. There's no flag link for comments.

<comment><USER6> Hit reply, then flag.</comment></comment>


Photos from Crude Sketches: Nvidia's GauGAN Explained Visually - <AUTHOR> https://adamdking.com/blog/gaugan/ <comment><AUTHOR> NVIDIA just released the code: [https://github.com/nvlabs/spade/](https://github.com/nvlabs/spade/)

<comment><USER2> What software do you use to make those 3D DNN architecture images?

<comment><AUTHOR> For all the 3D diagrams that I made (including the animated one at the end) I wrote code that used [https://threejs.org/](https://threejs.org/) and my custom library. It worked, but with a lot of hassle. In the future I'll likely try using Blender.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I find this ... disquieting. I think its fantastic but I also find something about the _lack_ of uncanny valley troubling.

I should feel happier about it, but I can't stop feeling a bit odd that a sketch can go to photorealistic north of the bad so well now: I expected 5-10 more years for this.

<comment><USER4> im very glad to find a person who shares my feelings. every time i open my feeds and i see a headline about some kind of machine learning or ai breakthrough, i feel physically uncomfortable. every time i open one of those links there is a chance that it will change the equation of life.

the other day i opened one of those links and it was GTP-2. besides all the insane implications of GTP-2, what bothers me is that i am no longer able to assume that any internet comment is written by a human, no matter how convincing. there are still comments that GTP-2 could not write but anyone who points that out is pretty short sighted because it wont be long before there are vanishingly few comments that could not have been generated. i kind of liked knowing that a person was typing out (almost) all those comments.

one of the biggest realizations ive had recently is that technology does not cut equally in both directions. everyone in my generation has thought of technology as a neutral entity: for every benefit of a given technology, one can point out a corresponding disadvantage. on the surface it seems like the scale dips neither for the societal disadvantages nor for the societal benefits. this is a very fundamental belief. and its wrong. its funny how people put so much faith in such fuzzy logic.

the implications of that realization are difficult to swallow. it means that with every new technology introduced into the world, there is the potential for it to harm peoples quality of life. or improve it. but there is no regulation of technology so its a crap shoot. weve been rolling the dice for a long time and we didnt even know it. and i think weve been winning. but i think that high level automation is not going to be a win for us.

besides all of that, there is absolutely no debate that these advancements in ai are to our generation what personal computers were to the baby boomer generation. without close attention, we will fall behind and our kids will have fluency in the new world of automation while we cling to very old and outdated patterns. in other words, it makes me feel very old.

<comment><USER5> > one of the biggest realizations ive had recently is that technology does not > cut equally in both directions. everyone in my generation has thought of > technology as a neutral entity: for every benefit of a given technology, one > can point out a corresponding disadvantage.

Maybe that's just because technological innovation is slowing down.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure I agree that I see it slowing down. I wish it would for a bit so everyone could catch their breath. Social we are just catching up with the implications of social media and there is so much we haven't come to terms with like CRISPR. It seems like just what we've accomplished in the last 10-15 years would happen over several generations previously. We really aren't ready for the changes that are baked in now.

<comment><USER5> > I'm not sure I agree that I see it slowing down. I wish it would for a bit > so everyone could catch their breath. Social we are just catching up with > the implications of social media and there is so much we haven't come to > terms with like CRISPR.

Societal changes lag technological ones by at least 5-10 years. So the changes we're feeling now were largely the result of technological changes in the early 2010s. But I do think technology today is slowing down. Individual processor speed certainly has, which has far reaching implications. Cloud computing and GPUs have given general purpose processes another step in "perceived" performance, but those are pretty much one-trick ponies.

If processor individual performance doesn't increase, the economies of scale that a large data center gives you eventually has diminishing marginal returns, and you're again limited by individual processor speed. GPUs similarly give a speed-up for applications that can optimize for them, but eventually they will run into the same performance walls that general purpose chips run into.

Other technologies, like machine learning and much of genetics heavily rely on exponential improvements in the underlying hardware.

If the death of moore's law is really happening, it will have far reaching implications in all computational based industries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Imagine the impact on moviemaking that this will have within just a few iterations of processing power. Thousands of hours of visual effect artist work in film and TV will soon be abstracted into some high-level commands, transformed by software into moving film. Very exciting.

<comment><USER8> Hard to tell if this impact will be negative or not.

<comment><USER9> Probably no difference to the blockbusters but for small budget on SYFY and independent films could be a great thing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow... the effort that went into this article is impressive! Great animations and explanations to decompose what is a pretty complex subject.

Nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER11> That is one of the best articles I have ever seen on a complex technical subject. A reasonable amount of math, great examples, and animations of the process.

If the massively online education people had that kind of quality, maybe people would actually finish the courses.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you want to see the same thing done 18 years ago without new-age machine learning, read [https://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image- analogies/index.html](https://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image- analogies/index.html) IMO the most elegant vision/graphics algorithm ever written.

Specifically this is the "texture-by-numbers" application. Ex: [https://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image- analogies/potomac.htm...](https://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image- analogies/potomac.html)

Every single fancypants application of neural nets in graphics today is a retread of one of the applications of the Image Analogies algorithm.

<comment><USER13> Is it really the same thing? The method you cite is a type of style transfer. Input sharp focused image and you get a blurrier version out with the required style. You're removing information with a particular type of convolution.

The nvidia version seems to inpaint new details into the user segmented areas, like a collage of sorts.</comment></comment>


Apple makes mobility data available to aid Covid-19 efforts - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/04/apple-makes-mobility-data-available-to-aid-covid-19-efforts/ <comment><USER2> "Maps does not associate mobility data with a user's Apple ID, and Apple does not keep a history of where a user has been. Using aggregated data collected from Apple Maps, the new website indicates mobility trends for major cities and 63 countries or regions. The information is generated by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions. The data sets are then compared to reflect a change in volume of people driving, walking or taking public transit around the world. Data availability in a particular city, country, or region is subject to a number of factors, including minimum thresholds for direction requests made per day."

</comment><comment><USER3> The Apple/Google mobility data gave us the missing piece that lets us know if the lockdown strategy is the correct strategy.

we basically have a control group in Sweden who isn't locked down. So mobility plus case rate and we can see the different options

[https://philandrews.io/post/daily-country-mobility-vs- sars-c...](https://philandrews.io/post/daily-country-mobility-vs-sars- cov-2-casemortality-report)

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess it's time to unplug from these spyware devices...this has gone a bit too far!

<comment><USER5> Why not unplug from the devices -after- we have made it possible to go out in public without spreading a pandemic virus?

Tracking information like this could allow us to manage the spread well enough to get back to a somewhat normal day of life.

I realize the arguments about this stuff never going away once the genie is out of the bottle. Public pressure will cause it to go away after the danger is over.

But if it doesn't, then you can stop using your phone.

<comment><USER6> Nah, let's unplug them right now, throw them in the trash, and never buy any such device ever again.

It's plainly obvious what's going on by now.

I certainly didn't fork over $999 so that this uniquely identifiable billing and accounting radio tag could be used calculate a multi-year, comprehensive geolocation log of 3D/XYZ coordinates (precision within ~100 centimeters) and accelerometer sensor values, that only large corporations, organizations, institutions and services can share amongst one another, but I cannot see for myself.

I'd rather spend $999 on SDR antennas and mess around with open-source spectrum analysis software, and join the eavesdropping party, and surveil all the tagged animals within range.</comment></comment></comment>


Try before you buy? Zuckerberg has a public Twitter account? - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/06/try-before-you-buy-zuckerberg-has-a-public-twitter-account/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of some thoughts I had on how Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, and yet you or I can use an iPhone, while he, despite his wealth, is stuck with clunky Windows Mobile.

<comment><USER3> Bill Gates doesn't even strike me as a guy who would use a mobile phone much.

<comment><USER2> But how about an excellent mobile browser that actually works?

<comment><USER4> Bill Gates uses firefox when nobody is looking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading his writing here, I have the same reaction to when I read the leaked articles of his on Slate, which is a sort of soft surprise that he's one of the few people online that I've read who has some sense of grammar and sentence construction. He writes like somebody who knows how to write.

It surprised me then and surprises me now, because there's some reputation of Zuckerberg as a sort of clueless cro-magnon whose web site is an ugly, lame waste of time, and while I disagree with the latter very strongly, I still like reading the posts he makes and getting the feeling that he is, in fact, a very smart person.

(I also love the fact that he's the man whose at the age and fame level to really be able to use Facebook and become a celebrity-hounding fameballer, but hasn't taken advantage of his success whatsoever. The guy just has a very honest feeling to him, and that reflects in his site. I like that.)</comment>


You're asking the wrong question - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aisleten.com/2008/11/20/youre-asking-the-wrong-question/#comments <comment><USER3> Incidentally, this in reverse is an excellent way to gauge character and experience. When people ask you what you think, if you're bluntly critical of their idea, the ones who accept your criticism and figure out ways to fix their idea (if it was broken) are the ones who are capable enough to see the value in good ideas. The ones who get mad at your criticism are going nowhere fast.

Holds true across nearly every category. Anybody who makes things and gets offended when people don't like it won't find it easy to progress.

<comment><USER4> It really depends on the criticism. Some people do not _critique_ things so much as dismiss them. It is a waste of time to engage with such people is such a mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> He's making a wrong statement. If you ask 10 people who think they know software what their opinion is - you will get 10 opinions, and there is no way to know which one will work.

Stay true to your vision, the first change you should make is when you try to use it, and it does not work well, or when the first people try to use it, and you are finding out that they are not doing what they should be doing.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Most people can't tell if software is going to be usefule to them until you put it into their hands and get them to try it out - <USER2> experienced programmers have problems with this.

As an example, I recently wrote an application. The application was designed to meet a need that I had that no software package seems to currenty meet - specifically allowing me to create a program to follow on my exercise bike at home whose idea of an onboard computer is a counter that gives a fake number of metres ridden since the start of the session. As a secondary goal, I wanted to use this app to learn Cocoa for the Mac, which would lead me into iPhone development. As a tertiary goal, I thought it would be nice to put the app on sale - after all, I can hardly be unique right? If I see the need for this app, surely others could too!

So, after three months of work, I had a pretty nice app. No known bugs, easy to use, reasonably pretty, but of course, hey, it doesn't do a lot except roughly copy the functionality of any half-decent exercise bike's on-board computer, so nothing special. _I_ knew that the app was useful - I had been using it daily for about 2 months at this point, and it was actually really good at getting me to work up a sweat. But then I tried to explain to family and friends what this app did. Every single one of them wanted to know how you plugged the computer into the bike, which of course you can't do, because the bike has a brain dead onboard computer with no way of connecting _anything_ , hence the need to write this piece of software (for the curious, the program simply keeps a running counter based on a timer and your program - if you've programmed a higher speed for a block of the program, the counter increments faster. The user has to keep the bike's counter up with the computer's counter).

The problem was that everyone has the model of the exercise bike computer that changes the gears of the bike the higher the bar is on the little readout. My system can't change the gears, not being connected to the bike, instead it just makes you pedal faster (which achieves the same goal of making you work harder). But because the app goes against what people expect, it was next to impossible to get them enthused about it without sitting them down on a bike, with the app running next to them, and making them do a program. _Then_ they understood what the point was, but to this day I have never succeeded in getting someone to understand the app's main usage just by explaining it. I eventually decided to not put the thing on the market, because I couldn't see any easy solution to the marketing difficulties, and anyhow, I had already achieved goals #1 and #2 with the project.

All of that to say that asking for people's opinions on an _idea_ is very unlikely to work very well, unless you have really good communication skills, and even then, the person listening needs to have a certain capacity to envision something that doesn't exist, and not everyone can do that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would counter that if you asked the question "Why does this idea suck" up front, you'd have gotten that exact feedback way earlier in the process.

Why does it suck? Because it doesn't interface with the bike. As you put it yourself, "it goes against what people expect" It's not that you should quit, but that you need to think about this ahead of time and figure out specifically how you're going to counter these expectations.

<comment><USER6> Well, _I_ would counter that you just made my point for me! The reason the app sucks is not that it doesn't connect to the bike - if you get someone to use it whilst actually on a bike they see the utility straight away (and indeed the base problem the app solves is how to get a decent exercise program going when your on-board computer is braindead, and hence can't be connected to). The problem is that it is very difficult to market. If I had asked the question 'Why does this suck?', people would have told me that it's because it doesn't connect to the bike, when in fact the real problem is elsewhere - asking the question would have got me the wrong answer, which was the point I was trying to make in my first point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point...

But I would counter your counter by saying that you identified _late in the game_ that you were going to have a very hard time marketing the app due to people's expectations. Poor marketing and inability to get users to bite kills plenty of decent ideas. Not recognizing that early on is as damning as building something that collapses when you try to scale it.

I'm not saying your idea is a bad one. I'm just saying that getting criticism early on, even of a vague idea, can be very helpful. It can help you not only in implementing your idea, but also in implementing any marketing strategies or deciding how you want to position your product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this supposed to go to the first comment?</comment>