Ask YC: How to Start a Cancer Wiki - <AUTHOR>

Forgive me for being a bit more personal than HN normally gets.
The people who read Hacker News are among the brightest, most productive, and most creative people I've associated with. That's why I'd like your advice, and your help.
My dad was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer about 2 months ago. My family and I have watched him go through weeks of radiation treatment. After burning his neck & the tissue inside his throat, it hurts him to eat.
With all the side-effects from drugs and treatment, and after only 1 round of chemotherapy, he has decided to stop the chemo. This has devastated my family, and I sit and wonder what to do.
I decided to start researching alternative cancer treatments, and set up http://KancerWiki.com (using the open source PM Wiki) to organize my research.
I have a few questions.
1. Do you have any suggestions for how to get the help of others who might want to help? Perhaps people whose parents or loved ones are similarly suffering? There are probably other people out there who have already gone through something similar & it'd be great to hear from them about non-traditional or modified-from-traditional methods of treating cancer (there seem to be a lot of hoaxes and scams out there for cancer treatment, so I'd like to find scientifically-verified treatments).
2. Does anybody know the story of how Wikipedia or other popular Wiki's have spread?
3. Does anybody here want to help in any way?
Things I need help with:
1. Posting information about non-traditional (but science-based) cancer treatments.
2. Organizing and building the site.
3. Spreading the word about the site.
Thanks! I look forward to hearing back from you. http://www.adamchavez.net/blog/contact/ <comment><USER2> While it's a somewhat different focus (more technical as opposed to patient- based), the most successful medical wiki I can think of is <http://www.fluwikie.com/>.

As for the latter two of your posts, I would check out the existant support forums for the particular type of cancer you're going to focus on (I say this assuming that some forums or Yahoo! mailing lists exist out there, as they seem to for just about all diseases).

</comment><comment><USER3> You can start by not needlessly spelling cancer with a k.

My best however, to you and your family.

<comment><USER4> Have you ever bought a domain? I see this meme continually and even on threads on hacker news. Do laymen really think that people are choosing these silly spellings because it is "the cool thing to do?"

FYI, to a ridiculous extent, all reasonable, 10 characters or less, English or English-ish domain names are occupied by squatters. I am not the OP, but so you understand the depth of the issue, I invite those who upvoted the parent to try finding available cancer-related domain names that would be appropriate. Submit 10 at the link below. If by some chance you do find a good one, why not report back and help out the op?

[http://www.123cheapdomains.com/domain-registration/bulk- regi...](http://www.123cheapdomains.com/domain-registration/bulk- registration.html)

<comment><USER5> cancer-wiki.com

canceria.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've informally (but seriously) studied natural health for several years, and the natural health community is really quite opposed to most of mainstream medicines approaches to cancer treatment.

Depending on where you're located, you may be able to find naturopathic doctors in your community.

One of the best author's I've encountered in this space is Dr. Samuel Epstein -- <http://www.preventcancer.com/about/epstein.htm> who has a huge list of credentials/publications, and goes to great lengths to show why the structure of the cancer industry, including things like the American Cancer Society, at least in the US, isn't well motivated or well suited to promoting the most effective approaches.

The natural health community's approach to wellness is fairly intrusive on the normal American lifestyle. Unless you live in a city with a really good selection of restaurants, it often means cooking all your own food and drastically changing your diet. I personally avoid all of: sugar/substitutes, hydrogenated oils, MSG/yeast extract, homogonized milk, refined grains, artificial colors/sweeteners, anything where oils are heated above their smoke point. I mainly eat raw fresh produce, whole grains, and organic meat. I've come to enjoy cooking -- it's a useful skill, both pragmatically and socially. :)

Some things frequently mentioned as having anti cancer properties are maca root, and tumeric, especially when combined with black pepper. (all raw.) Some of the very high end multivitamin supplements that you find in health stores include these. Frequent sunlight without sunscreen is important too.

In general, the natural health community's perspectives on many things are often counter to mainstream medicine's positions. Be prepared to evaluate some core beliefs in undertaking this research. :)

<comment><USER7> Frankly, I find the idea of "natural health", when pitched to cancer patients, offensive. Sure, I am willing to believe that eating more organic, raw, and otherwise non-processed food seriously reduces the risk of cancer. But prevention is not a treatment. You can't raw food your way to a cure to cancer. It just doesn't work. People die because they become so deluded. Indiscriminate as it may be, chemotherapy works.

You suggest that naturopathic medicine is opposed to mainstream cancer treatment, but you don't suggest alternatives. What is an effective alternative to chemotherapy?

<comment><USER8> Can you cite the studies that show that changing lifestyle (organics + supplementation) doesn't influence cancer outcome?

Frankly, I find your know-it-all arrogance shocking, and all that is wrong with the medicine. 90% of doctors I have worked with have the same mentality. If it's not studied, how can you come to a conclusion?

Here's one little extract to whet your appetite.

[edit: btw I am in no way advocating naturopathy, homeopathy or other well debunked shams]

\</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Men with early stage prostate cancer who make intensive changes in diet and lifestyle may stop or perhaps even reverse the progression of their illness, according to a new study.

The research is the first randomised, controlled trial showing that lifestyle changes may affect the progression of any type of cancer.

The research team behind the American study looked at 93 men with biopsy- proven prostate cancer who had elected not to undergo conventional treatment for reasons unrelated to this study. The participants were randomly divided into either a group who were asked to make comprehensive changes in diet and lifestyle or a comparison group who were not asked to do so.

Participants in the lifestyle-change group were placed on a vegan diet consisting primarily of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes supplemented with soy, vitamins and minerals. They participated in moderate aerobic exercise, yoga/meditation, and a weekly support group session. A registered dietitian was available for consultation, and a nurse case manager contacted the participants regularly.

<comment><USER7> The burden of proof is not on me here. I am certainly in favor of more medical studies about alternative approaches to cancer treatment. More science is a wonderful thing.

<comment><USER8> You made a claim that changing your lifestyle cannot possibly cure cancer. Surely the burden of proof is on the claimant? How do you reconcile the growing body of evidence to the contrar?

<comment><USER7> My intended claim, which I admit could benefit from more precise wording, is that lifestyle changes are not more effective than conventional treatment.

<comment><USER8> Shouldn't you have to back up a bold claim like that with proof though? Conventional treatment is often marginally better than placebo.

<comment><USER7> No, I don't have to back up it up. That's the whole point.

<comment><USER8> Explain?

<comment><USER7> Decades of the scientific method have established the status quo. You, as the outsider of convention, have the burden of proof. You intuitively know this -- if there was such compelling proof, you would be able to convince a lot of people of the potential, rather than saying "no, I don't have to prove it, you need to prove science." Science is already proven. I'm not denying the potential of alternative treatments, but for now, I expect you and I both would take the chemotherapy over making ourselves guinea pigs.

<comment><USER8> Saying that something is better than something else would surely merit a single clinical trial, showing large effect low p outcomes in favor of chemo vs lifestlye? Can you point to a single study since it is already proven? :)

Here are a few that may change your mind: <http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/137/1/233S> <http://www.annieappleseedproject.org/lifchancline.html> <http://bastyrcenter.org/content/view/913/>

Surely you must admit that your claim that lifestyle change cannot reduce mortality rate is premature. It's only recently being studied, and with the great early results we will see many more such papers investigating the effects.

My money would be on a combination: Lifestyle change + aggressive supplementation + chemo.

<comment><USER7> I've said that all along -- supplementation + diet change + chemo is better, and certainly no worse, than chemo alone.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, but read your post again: ...But prevention is not a treatment. You can't raw food your way to a cure to cancer. It just doesn't work. People die because they become so deluded....

"It just doesn't work" is a statement of fact. I showed you some research that refutes this (lifestyle change alone can cure in certain cases). What more do you need to change your opinion?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Depending upon what stage the cancer is in and the prognosis for additional treatments, your father may have made a rational decision. In the end it's his decision.

Instead of creating a new forum I would encourage you to consult and contribute to existing forums devoted to nasopharyngeal cancer--and other available information sources--with a focus on helping your father. This has to be your immediate priority.

You might also consult <http://www.clinicaltrials.gov> it lists 115 new studies that are recruiting patients.

</comment><comment><USER10> Have you seen this talk: [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/eva_vertes_looks_to_the_f...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/eva_vertes_looks_to_the_future_of_medicine.html)

You may wish to add it to the wiki as a "non-traditional but scientifically verified" way of thinking of cancer. Very interesting. I wonder how far she got with the research since 2005.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a great idea that could really help people that don't have the resources to go and get opinions from many different doctors by learning from the experience of those who do. I wish you the best.

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you thought about using twitter? I know it may sound hackneyed, but with a legitimate cause and a project they can rally around, social media types can really help get the ball rolling.

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a belief that drinking <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomegranate> juice every day will prevent cancer.

</comment><comment><USER13> My heart goes out to you and your family.

It's often extremely difficult for people to go through radiation and chemotherapy. He sounds like he's in the middle of that. I would encourage you to keep talking with him and his doctors. Tell the doctors about what he's experiencing. Often there are good ways to ameliorate side effects. Insist that your father's discomfort be allayed as much as possible. Consult with dieticians and nutritionists about good ways for your father to get proper nutrition while experiencing the radiation and chemotherapies. If his physicians don't provide alternatives, consider consulting with other doctors.

Often there are emotional issues at play in the face of serious illnesses that aren't addressed by doctors, or even families. Again, encourage your father and all the family to ask questions of the doctors, and get those questions answered. Listen to your father with empathy. Acknowledge and reflect his pain...and most importantly, the uncertainty you are all facing. You might consider counseling for he and/or the family. There is actually a difference between the emotional pain people struggling with serious illness undergo, and actual clinical depression (major depressive disorder). It's not out of the realm of possibility that antidepressant medication might help.

I would encourage you and your family to continue down the path of _evidence based medicine_. You are right. There are a lot of quack "cures" in the realm of "alternative medicine" out there, designed solely to take your money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughts logjam

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am not a doctor, but I did a quick google search on this, and came up with this article, [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080628155300.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080628155300.htm) relating to white blood cell therapy, whereby the immune system is stimulated to try and counteract the cancer. Such avenues could be worth looking into, though again, I am not an expert.</comment>


Fancy algorithms lose; dumb C code wins - <AUTHOR> http://blog.begriffsschrift.com/2011/11/11#real-c

<comment><USER2> This doesn't strike me as particularly interesting. CL is just a programming language, a functional assembly so iit seems intuitive that it would be infeasible to cache all computations. Even just caching all programs up to a given size is a big issue because the number grows exponentially with the size of the program, so even if you could cache all programs of a given size it wouldn't neccesarily help to solve (reduce) larger programs very much.

It would be like trying to write a compiler with a peephole optimization for every form of the language, you just end up with a large, slow compiler.

Still it makes me want to write an SKI interpreter.

<comment><USER3> > Still it makes me want to write an SKI interpreter.

See unlambda at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlambda>.

<comment><USER4> Bah, Unlambda is clearly artificial. You want something that is ridiculous in a natural way, you use Iota: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iota_and_Jot>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first solution that didn't involve disk or network IO was the fast one?

<comment><USER6> My thoughts exactly. It has nothing to do with language at all.

<comment><USER7> Potentially it still might have done; since C is more efficient with memory, it may not have been practical to take that approach with PHP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ah, nothing like a false dichotomy to start the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER9> So _not_ putting stuff into a transactional database and using a compiled language instead of an interpreted one is better for computationally intensive tasks? Big surprise.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone wanting to do experimentation of pre-computing logical expressions should take a look at Binary Decision Diagrams.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_decision_diagram>

</comment><comment><USER11> This story reminds me of the (apocryphal?) claim that C++ running on a single machine can often beat a cluster of Hadoop machines. Scalability is another matter.

<comment><USER12> That's a totally problem/domain specific assertion. A single machine with 8 or so cores simply isn't going to make it through a hundred terabytes of data, and many (most?) hadoop jobs are IO-bound anyway.

If you find that micro-optimization greatly increases your performance, you probably shouldn't be using hadoop anyway...

<comment><USER13> > If you find that micro-optimization greatly increases your performance, you > probably shouldn't be using hadoop anyway...

It's all a matter of what you optimize for. In a recent project, a C++ version, using memory mapped files with a fixed-length record, was about 20 times faster than the hadoop version, and that's just the CPU.

The C++ version had: no deserializing needed, everything random access, multiple runs on same data had _NO_ I/O requirements (mmap was cached between runs). It was about as hard to write.

So, instead of running a 100-core strong Hadoop install (which is small, but far from trivial), I was able to do with one hefty 8-core machine.

Scaling up is "easier" with Hadoop, in the sense that you can just throw money at it and get more EC@/rackspace nodes when needed. But it is a _lot_ of money.

Hadoop makes sense if you've got lots of money to waste, _and_ actually need _thousands_ of cores (cause you'll only need a few tens if you effectively use your hardware).

<comment><USER14> If your working set fits entirely in ram on a single machine, hadoop is the wrong tool for the job. Hadoop is more about getting obscene IO bandwidth from hundreds of hard disk spindles going in parallel, not raw number of cores/parallel computation.

<comment><USER13> While that is what Hadoop is about, and it is successful at it, it is very far from being efficient; In my experience, you pay 10x compared to good use of the same hardware. "obscene IO bandwidth" is right, but at 10% of the practical maximum.

This is a tradeoff that people in computing have been happily taking for years -- e.g. using a higher level language is a similar kind of tradeoff (use Python instead of C - pay x10 in performance, get x10 shorter development time).

But this tradeoff only makes sense if the x10 thing you get is cheaper than the x10 thing you pay for. With hadoop, you pay x10 for hardware/computing time and more for administration (unless you have some kind of EC2 elastic mapreduce, at which point you pay x20 for hardware/computing but no administration cost), and you save some development time.

Two hadoop projects I was consulting on (or rather, consulting _off_ hadoop) were paying ~$10K/month each to Amazon for a while, when <$20K in programmer time for each reduced it to working on one beefy machine that was already located in the office, with ~$100/month cost (power, cooling).

<comment><USER14> I've found the slowdown from hadoop to be very problem dependent. I've seen anywhere from no slowdown to 1000x slower. It sounds to me like those projects should never have been using hadoop in the first place. If your problem is not IO constrained naturally, moving it to hadoop will make it IO constrained. In my experience doing that will get you a 10x-100x slowdown versus a more appropriate solution on the same hardware.

If your problem is IO constrained, for example processing 10 TB of log data, hadoop will get all your disks to 100% utilization just as well as anything else will. It will leave your processors horribly underutilized, but that's just the nature of IO constrained problems. If you could get 10 TB of ram dedicated to your dataset then you could easily get a massive speedup over the hadoop solution but that's just not realistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Must be a slow news day when this hits the front page.

</comment><comment><USER16> From the post: "This post is about sucking it up and just writing low-level code"

So I'm quite sure that C is a high level language.

Assembly is low level. It allows you to control the cpu directly by telling it what instructions to run and which registers should be used for what. In C the closest thing you have is specifying if a register should be used at all. Or inline assembly, which again...is just assembly.

And yes....php is even higher level.

Caching to drive is only useful if your operation takes longer than reading from drive. In this case reading from drive was slower than doing the calculation. What he should have considered is an in-memory-cache.

<comment><USER17> _> So I'm quite sure that C is a high level language._

Except it isn't. At least not anymore. This statement was true a few decades back, when C _was_ the highest level available. Today, C is barely a level above Assembly on the abstraction scale of programming languages.

Mind you, I'm not saying that's bad (and most other people don't mean it as an insult, either). C is a powerful language that will probably be needed by generations to come. But calling it "high level" today is being stuck in the 1970s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this might be much faster with caching, but the mistake was to put caching in some external database, rather than local process memory.

There are only 4 characters possible: `,i,k,s - that means on a 64b machine you can have 29 elements fitting into a native integer (5 bits for length + 29 2-bit elements). Use that as a key for a hash in a cache and compute the longer terms in a standard way to avoid smaller mallocs, preallocate large chunks of memory which can be filled linear way... I'd hope for 1.5-2x speedup over the original "dumb C".

Sigh... now I'm tempted to actually try that. Does anyone know of a good library of SKI fragments for testing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to see what you come up with! Here are lots of CL terms you can use: <http://share.begriffsschrift.com/joe/bank-17.txt.bz2>

It is a tab delimited file. The first column is all CL terms of length 17 which reduce to a normal form. The second column is what they reduce to, and the last column is the number of reduction steps it took in a leftmost- outermost evaluation order.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure how comparable it is to your program since I cannot run it in batch mode (memory leaking...), but I'm able to process the first 340k rows of that file in under 7 seconds with cache limited to 15 characters. That makes 20 microseconds per row (with checking the result).

Or another way - 7 microseconds per reduction step on average.

Without cache, it takes minutes, so I didn't want to wait for the actual time. See <http://imgur.com/FL2Eg> for seconds per row -vs- cache limit. Ah... written in python without using the bit-packing tricks. I guess the 100+ times speedup is enough anyways... <https://bitbucket.org/viraptor/ski/src>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nicely done, and good analysis. It's a fascinating problem, isn't it? Simple rules, but an opportunity to approach it several ways and refine the solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Once you get good enough at Python or Ruby knowing C is so very, very important. It releases whole swaths of problems up to you and binding it to Ruby or Python is _easy_.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hey begriffs, next time we're hanging at CE or a tech social, let's talk about this kinda stuff. I may be able to shed some light on making "fancy" stuff work faster/better... though a straight-up C implementation without I/O is gonna win (though it perhaps won't be as persistent as, say, anything with actual persistence)

</comment><comment><USER21> You complain about App Engine expiring requests, but I think the new 'backend instances' concept allows you to have really long requests running.</comment>


CDC: One quarter of young adults contemplated suicide during pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/13/cdc-mental-health-pandemic-394832 <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what the relevance of a statistic on "contemplating" suicide is. If you ask adults, I'd expect the number who would say they ever "contemplated" suicide when they were younger would be close to 100%.

I remember in the 80's, it was common for high schools to claim that up to 50% of students thought about suicide. It's one of the reasons there was an explosion in in-school counseling services and posters and PSA's on radio, etc...

There was an article in the local newspaper a few months ago stating that in the months that followed the start of lockdown, suicides in my state were down about 40%.

<comment><USER3> The relevance is this period in time is majorly fucked up, and will fuck people up for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious how this compares to normal, and other crises like 2008.

</comment><comment><USER5> One quarter of which group?</comment>


In the basement with transhumanism's DIY cyberpunks - <AUTHOR> http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/headline-story/12702/transhumanism-grinders-kurzweil-singularity/ <comment><USER2> I have a neodymium finger implant and a NFC implant in each hand. Several of my friends in Orlando and the Valley have similar setups.

We have integrated our implants with cell phones, vending machines, motorcycles, doors, cars, laptops... even candy dispensers. There were ~200 of us three years ago. Now we are well into the thousands and growing rapidly as we empower other crazy people with our ideas.

It is a bit like having tiny superpowers. Keep an eye on this space because it might be a part of your life sooner than you think.

After wearables become the norm that is...

<comment><USER3> Can you link us to more info on the NFC implant? Is this useful for auth like a YubiKey?

What is the state of the art on battery-powered implants? How far out is sourcing energy directly from the body? I guess inductive charge is an important option here.

Has the neodymium implant served any practical useful purpose for you? That seems more interesting to me than the electronics in some sense, because of how quickly anything silicon becomes obsolete.

<comment><USER2> You can buy the xNT NFC chips from here: [https://dangerousthings.com/](https://dangerousthings.com/)

There is no secure element in the chip, so it can not directly replace a yubikey. It could however hold encrypted data or be used to replace car keys etc. When it comes to physical access I normally just authenticate using the devices hard coded UUID. This is at least significantly better security than a traditional metal key which can be trivially picked. I modify things with NFC Reader/arduino/relay setups to read my UUID and start/stop lock/unlock things such as my motorcycle.

You also have 1k of read/write storage so there are a number of interesting possibilities there. Mine often contain my info as a vcard so anyone can tap my hand to import my contact info. Or sometimes it might launch a rickroll.

The magnet has been really interesting. I am constantly finding EMF around me. Knowing if a power strip is on without fiddling with it, knowing if wires are hot without touching them, knowing when I fill up a soda cup exactly where under the counter the motor is, knowing where transformers are in walls. It is I admit mostly a curiosity, but I have learned to use it as a tool instinctively. When I am trying to hold screws up in hard to reach places, when I have lots of tiny screws I need a secure place to hold, or when I drop a screw in a spot just big enough for a single finger to reach. I don't even think about it anymore. It is just like "oh I have this tool" or "oh there is EMF over there". It is interesting how the brain just starts to accept new abilities to the point they can be used passively.

It also has some fun side effects. For a while I thought the compass in my smartphone was broken. Had to learn to stop holding it in my right hand. I can "feel" music if i put my finger near a speaker. Hard to describe. Equally hard to describe is when I encounter a string magnet and the magnet under my skin flips. It is... not painful, but certainly not enjoyable. Would do it all over again though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The last few paragraphs really hit home for me - The Singularity is already here... Corporations are thinking machines with all relevant constitutional prerogatives available. Humans are already in service to them, much as animals are to us.

<comment><USER5> [http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai- youre-...](http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai-youre- soaking-in-it.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure that a mention of a finger magnet and a single "grinder" who temporarily had some body sensors qualifies as a whole cutting-edge transhuman movement in Pittsburgh. It's certainly interesting to reflect on the possibilities and to marvel at those quirky enough to experiment on themselves. But this article seems more like a basic review of sci-fi from the last 60 years rather than a peek into the transhuman movement, to whatever extent such a thing actually exists.

<comment><USER7> Huh, I first read about magnetic fingertip implants back in 2006:

[http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/mods/news/2006/06/71087?cur...](http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/mods/news/2006/06/71087?currentPage=all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "It's the old trope, echoed by Philip K. Dick for one"; I always felt that Jack Vance got short shrift on this. In the ~1958 "Languages of Pao" he had body augmentation as a major subplot: "... The anti-gravity mesh was laid into the bottom of the feet and connect to the processors in the calves by means of flexible tubes thrust up from the feet ... a switch was installed under the skin of the left thigh..."

Almost certainly the all too brief "Technomages" of Babylon-5 were based on these Vance characters.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's something very human about being in a fringe, they're like our scout ants.</comment>


Traitorous eight - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight

<comment><USER2> That distinguished list of people who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 includes Gordon Moore, famous for Moore's Law (and other little things, like co-founding Intel).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "After learning some of the tricks of the trade, some people think they know the trade." \- Eugene_Kleiner</comment>


How to Keep a Journal in Plain Text (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://plaintextproject.online/2017/07/19/journal.html <comment><USER2> org-journal has a global-map binding (C-c C-j) that drops me into a timestamped outline for the day. It's pretty handy for recording a command snippet or query or something without having to _think_ about where to put it, even though I haven't gotten into the many org-mode label and calendar features.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use markdown syntax for plain text even if I'm not displaying it as formatted HTML. Having the option to format headers and text automatically is nice to have especially if you're sharing it with others.

It's simple enough to search through if everything is neat.

</comment><comment><USER4> Line breaks are the most difficult issue. I was writing notes about investing and about my career using Atom and realized how shitty it is to use for that. I'm anti-cloud for certain types of documents and I wanted it to be as portable as possible.

I use the Notes app on MacOs for work notes pretty much all day every day. I have dozens of saved commands for Kafka and Kubernetes that I can just grab and run.</comment>


Foxconn boosting automated production in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20161229PD206.html <comment><USER2> We're all in for some hurt but just think how screwed some countries are going to be. India comes to mind, they will miss this whole cycle of using manufacturing to bring the majority of folks out of poverty, it will pass right by them. As AI replaces call centers, automation replaces the factory worker, what's left for them?

Interesting times...

<comment><USER3> India is actually better positioned than most, what with their sea of IT infrastructure outsourcers and maintainers.

It's Africans who will likely get screwed again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Foxconn Electronics is automating production at its factories in China in three phases, aiming to fully automate entire factories eventually, according to general manager Dai Jia-peng for Foxconn 's Automation Technology Development Committee._

Which is to say, they apparently have not done anything yet but are rather stating their intention.

<comment><USER5> Keep reading.

 _" There are 10 lights-out (fully automated) production lines at some factories, including table one in Chengdu, AIO (all-in-one) PC and LCD monitor lines at a factory in Chongqing, and a CNC line in Zhengzhou. ... Foxconn has deployed more than 40,000 Foxbots, industrial robots developed and produced in house, at factories in China."_

The Chengdu plant makes iPads.[1] Foxconn refers to "table one" because they usually don't name their contract manufacturing clients.

Apple used to have robotic assembly lines in Fremont, CA.[2] Then they switched to cheap outsourced manual labor.

[1] [http://micgadget.com/12674/the-inside-story-of-the-new- foxco...](http://micgadget.com/12674/the-inside-story-of-the-new-foxconns- chengdu-factory/) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk306ZkNOuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk306ZkNOuc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Give me handouts or i shot the hostage, eh fire the workforce, and eliminate all dependencies. Im serious- if i dont get a plane to china, somebody gets it.

Just what would happen if those governments would agree upon anti-automation laws and taxes for any country that relies on them?

</comment><comment><USER7> What happens when there are no consumers left to buy the things made in these factories?

<comment><USER8> What happens when no farm workers are left behind to buy farm produce? /s

<comment><USER9> They move to the cities and find jobs there. Then they buy produce.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Url changed from [https://9to5mac.com/2016/12/30/foxconn-fully-automated- facto...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/12/30/foxconn-fully-automated-factories- robots-automated-production/), which points to this.

Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you to submit original sources in cases like this, where one article is simply cribbed from another. Please do your due diligence on this—it makes HN significantly better.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you create wireframes? - <AUTHOR>

What is the best tool to create wireframes for iPhone/iPad/android apps or websites? Which tool do you use?<p>I've just started to use http://keynotekungfu.com/, but still looking forward to better ones. <comment><USER2> Asking for "the best" is subjective. I've never used the following but recent HN post regarding wireframe apps for Apple iPad was:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2090046>

<http://www.imockups.com/>

Using the search link on HN with the term <wireframe> should provide plenty of hits. I think there's a YC funded company that deals with wireframe software, but I'm not certain if this is correct?

</comment><comment><USER3> I use <http://balsamiq.com> and love it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Axure is cool but it's pretty expensive. It's the only one I've used (and I only used the trial - yeah I don't wireframe all that much :). It was great but I'm going to try a few others before shelling out the dough for a license.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://keynotekungfu.com/> clickable.</comment>


The Far Side is officially online for the first time, with new comics to come - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21026417/the-far-side-gary-larson-comic-website-first-time <comment><USER2> [https://www.thefarside.com/](https://www.thefarside.com/)

The link from the article.

</comment><comment><USER3> What great news! I loved this comics as a kid and I remember reading about his reasons for putting them on the internet. I think Larson is a major reason for my sense of humor today and I hope he gets a wider audience because he's got some of the best 'clean' dark visual gags in my opinion.

<comment> mark-r "Bummer of a birthmark, Hal".

Although my all-time favorite is probably "Midvale school for the gifted".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there an RSS feed for the site that anyone can find? [https://www.thefarside.com](https://www.thefarside.com)

<comment><USER5> Inoreader was unable to locate one. I wonder if any of those rss pipe sites would work to generate one. I feel like I will need multiple days of posts in order to find out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Glad to see Gary Larson reconciled his fear of infringement on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of my favorite Christmas gifts to receive as a kid was The Far Side daily calendar.

</comment><comment><USER8> "What's that mountain goat doing up here in this cloud bank?", says the pilot.

(not the first time I've referenced this joke on HN :)</comment>


How to begin a text - <AUTHOR> https://micaelwidell.com/how-to-begin-a-text/ <comment><USER3> In so many endeavors the hardest part is beginning. Starting a new job. Starting an exercise program. Quitting smoking. Leaving your comfort zone to do something new. For many people, starting a new software project can be intimidating: the open green field of endless possibilities can be paralyzing. Starting a machine learning class has made me feel dumb at first, so I quit.

The trick is to just start, and understand that you may stumble, and when you do know that you will learn from the failure and keep moving forward. Wanting perfection immediately without the failure first is where we usually go wrong.

This is what the growth mindset talk is all about. If you absorb these ideas it can be transformative. [https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing...](https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve)

<comment><USER4> As an extension of this I've also found asking questions helps with the growth mindset.

Often people are afraid to ask questions because they don't want to look stupid or admit ignorance, but explicitly admitting ignorance and asking what things mean or how things work in conversation actually has the opposite effect. You learn a lot faster and more often than not people feel more comfortable because you're being honest with what you don't understand.

The side effect is that you usually end up looking 'smarter' anyway - <USER2> ironically not asking questions because of fear of looking stupid can lead to it becoming clear you don't actually understand something you're pretending to which then _does_ make you look stupid.

I've seen two negative things that can come out of this - the first is the person that feigns surprise and says 'You don't know what X is?!". More common in college and around other people who are insecure about their own intelligence, best response to this is to admit ignorance again and re ask the question (usually becomes apparent that the person doing this doesn't know what they're talking about anyway and can't explain it well). I think this negative attitude is especially bad because it can disproportionately affect women in early CS because they are probably already worried about fitting in there anyway.

Second negative thing is that asking questions when you _do_ know the answer to show how smart you are is not the same thing as admitting ignorance and asking questions to learn - it comes across as obvious and is annoying.

Long answer, but generally agree that growth mindset and treating negative experiences as 'learning experiences' is the way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something similar works when coding too: begin with ugly code that only solves a simple case. Then keep iterating and refactoring until it is good. Trying to get it right from the beginning just means you don't get started.

<comment><USER6> Business documents often begin with what I call 'corporate throat clearing'. Same principle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's like making pancakes. The first pancake is always going to suck. Just accept it and get through it so you can make a great batch of pancakes, or blog posts, or products, or...

<comment><USER8> I've heard lots of people say that, but it almost always just means the pan isn't hot enough! Wait an extra minute and the first one will usually be fine.

I'm not sure how that translates back to writing, though...

<comment><USER9> Hand under running kitchen sink.

Shake on frying pan

If droplets wiggle and bounce -> pan hot enough.

<comment><USER10> (The Leidenfrost effect ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect\)))

<comment><USER11> Direct, working link, parent includes one of the parenthesis it seems: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect)

<comment><USER12> Non-mobile link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Summary: _" just start typing. ... delete until the first sentence is suitable to begin the text."_

That's a useful training aid, but shouldn't be necessary every time. After a few tries, starting an essay or post should be automatic. Writing a coherent essay is usually taught in high school. Strunk's classic "The Elements of Style" remains useful.

This problem afflicts some how-to videos. Starting with "Hi, how are you" in a one-way medium is pointless. How-to material should start with what you're going to do, go on to how to do it, and end with a recap of what you did.

 _Always engage brain before putting mouth in gear._

<comment><USER14> > After a few tries, starting an essay or post should be automatic.

That's my experience for the kind of essays they expect in college, but I when I want to write something for public consumption it's going to take more effort. The coherent essay that you learned to write and high school and served well in college may be informative, but it's still going to be boring. Capturing interest is still hard even once you have the mechanics of essay structure down.

Or at least it is for me. I'm less than fond of Strunk & White. These days I'd recommend _Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace_ over _Elements of Style._

As for the "hi", that actually does serve a purpose in one-way mediums. It takes time for our brains to adapt to the speech of a new speaker, so it's common to miss the first thing that someone says. But if everyone says "hi" first, then your brain has a split-second to adapt to new voices before hearing something new and interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I agree, somewhat.

It's also a question of how one approaches writing: pansing vs plotting. Some authors, like Stephen King, swear by pansing and begin by forcing themselves to produce a certain number or words; whether it starts with character development or the plot, they exercise their powers of putting words on paper. Some authors, like J.K. Rowling, take a different approach and begin with sketching, diagraming, etc. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, though.

Sometimes, even in the same piece of writing, I bounce back and forth between the two strategies.

<comment><USER16> I'm sorry, "pansing"? Is that a typo?

<comment><USER17> "Pantsing" is the correct verb. It means writing by the seat of one's pants, i.e. just making it up as you go along. It is recently coined jargon by the online writing community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py 'Start in the middle' is only half the answer. An introduction has to teach the reader enough about the topic to care about the main idea (i.e. exposition in fiction). You can start in medias res (a la the iliad) but you may end up circling back in a flashback (a la the odyssey, odysseus telling his journey to menelaos' court).

Starting in the middle is great if your reader already knows the backstory, but you alienate everyone but your core audience. That's expensive whether you're writing a blog post or a hollywood blockbuster.

It's a fair assumption that your reader came to you on the promise of the title of your piece. You have to fulfill the promise of that topic or at least give a tidbit soon enough that your audience doesn't give up and leave. You _can_ tell a book by its cover because books with misleading covers don't sell.

Balancing exposition against delivering on your genre promise is a 'theory of mind' skill that the best writers have in spades. Think of the first 10 minutes of star wars: scary villain darth vader (check) strolling through a sci-fi spaceship (check). Gun-toting strong princess (check) needing a rescue (check) sends her sci-fi robots (check) to get help. Next scene: crappy teenager main character (that's your audience, check) buys same robots.

The order of the villain / princess / hero scenes are optimized to serve the 'message for help / hero to the rescue' exchange. If this were a blog post you'd still have that 'problem / solution' structure but in both cases you need to be checking all your genre points and delivering breadcrumbs of the genre or topic that the reader is here to consume as you inform the reader enough to care about your argument.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like the term "throat-clearing" for the preliminary bits of writing, or the first parts of a talk. Nothing feels better than to just cut it.

</comment><comment><USER19> The worst way to begin a text: In capter 1, we will describe ..., then in chapter 2 we will take a look at ..., and then in chapter 3, we ...

<comment><USER20> The worst way to end a chapter is "in this chapter we have seen...". Unfortunately that seems to common in programming texts, for whatever reason

<comment><USER21> It's because some teacher somewhere along the way came up with this writing advice, which we all received in high school:

"First, tell them what you're going to tell them. Then, tell them. Then, tell them what you told them."

Following that structure leads to terrible, boring writing. The only useful part is the second sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Your good start sentence will come after "about 2-3 sentences in" it seems too optimistic, maybe for experienced writers that may be truth. I more pruned to believe the "Accept you will get it wrong the first nine times and only by the tenth time you'll succeed" \- Edward B. Burger

</comment><comment><USER23> Really: just write, then revise. Nothing special about the beginning. What hung me up as a writer for much of my life was not realizing I should get a rough draft down instead of editing as I wrote.

</comment><comment><USER24> For me it really helped to use a simple editor. Focuswriter [1], Sublime with a simple theme for Markdown files [2] or just good old notepad (the digital or analog one). Or use WordStar, like Sawyer and George R. R. Martin.

[1] [https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/](https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/) [2] [https://github.com/revolunet/sublimetext-markdown- preview](https://github.com/revolunet/sublimetext-markdown-preview)

</comment><comment><USER25> Don't start at the beginning. Start with what you really want to write, then go back and see what the beginning should be.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've also heard this as, "Cut the first chapter from your novel, that's where all the boring stuff is."

<comment><USER27> If you start _in medias res_ to begin with, you can just skip writing the boring part.

<comment><USER28> I'm procrastinating instead of beginning the documentation for some code. I've decided to start (this minute) _in medias res_. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> From the article:

      > You delete until you reach the first sentence
      > that feels elegant and suitable to begin the text.
      > Usually you will find it about 2-3 sentences in.

Judging by most articles I read, I would say it's more like the first 2-3 paragraphs in.

</comment><comment><USER30> This tangles up a few seemingly related questions:

1\. "How to begin _writing_ a text." How do you get yourself going so you aren't stuck on a blank page?

2\. "How to _write the beginning_ of a text." What is the process you take to determine the first sentence of a piece of writing?

3\. "How to begin a text." After you've gone through that process, what kind of opening sentence should you end up with?

The suggestion to just delete the first couple of sentences is an OK one. I think the important part is that it helps solve the first problem—how to get moving at all so you are past the blank page. And the key insight is to realize that _everything is still mutable_. Writing is not committing. Editing isn't either, for that matter. Only publishing is. Until then, it's all unfired clay and you can play with it to your heart's content.

I think deleting the first couple of sentences is a moderately OK suggestion for the second one. Deleting _any_ sentences that don't carry weight is always a good thing, and the first few are likely to be unuseful. But there's a good change that the next few sentences need work too. In a first draft, every line is suspect.

I don't think the article tells you much about what a good first sentence looks like. I don't necessarily think it needs to have "useful content". When I write, especially for the web where attention spans are measured in nanoseconds, the _entire_ goal of my first sentence is to get you to read the first paragraph. The goal of the first paragraph is to get you to read the first section. Then I start getting to the meat of the piece.

Often that means the first sentence is a hook. It may be deliberately emotional to get you excited about continuing to read. Or it may raise a question you want answered or claim to teach you something you want to know. Sometimes I just try to use interesting enough language or imagery to get you excited about the pure joy of reading.

Once I've done that, I've got a little more slack, a little more of your good faith, that I can then use to draw you through the rest of the work. If I'm trying to do something like explain how a garbage collector works, or describe a feature of a programming language you've never heard of, I need that initial burst of interest to get you to keep moving.

Then it's up to me to make the rest of the piece satisfying enough to be glad that I sucked you in.

</comment><comment><USER31> And, yet, so many times I just started writing and what came out was garbage.

I'm rather perplexed by how useful the advice to start appears to be perceived.

</comment><comment><USER32> I love this advice. I think it would apply to talks and presentations too, there's often an awkward and unnecessary pre-amble.

</comment><comment><USER33> I had a rather long comment, but when I started deleting the fluff at the beginning I realised I had nothing to say.

</comment><comment><USER34> I just started my first blog and was struggling to get started writing. Thanks for the advice!

</comment><comment><USER35> Applies to code as well.</comment>


Chrome OS Partners: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, HP, Lenovo, Qualcomm, TI - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/08/chrome-partners-acer-adobe-asus-freescale-hewlett-packard-lenovo-qualcomm-texas-instruments/ <comment><USER2> Adobe? Why adobe? Can we expect better Flash support on Linux now?

Or maybe Photoshop on Linux. It's not wrong to dream, eh?

</comment><comment><USER3> While I'm not personally excited about Chrome OS itself, an increased range of devices available without a Windows tax will be nice. I'm really hoping for a Thinkpad netbook and an increase in ARM-based netbooks.

</comment><comment><USER4> Chrome can have whatever it likes?

</comment><comment><USER5> What no ChrunchPad?</comment>


Chandrayaan 2 lander located on moon surface, trying to establish contact - alok-g https://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news/chandrayaan-2-lander-located-on-moon-surface-trying-to-establish-communication-says-isro-chief-k-sivan/story-Mmamx1u4MUa7AMTEKoBjKP.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully they get some useful data and exp from this impact. I long for a new era of space exploration.</comment>


Lenovo Is Getting a Crash Course in Calculating Damages for Privacy Violations - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/how-to-determine-damages-when-a-laptop-company-fucks-your-security-bad?trk_source=recommended

<comment><USER2> Tell your non-tech friends not to buy Lenovo. Tell them why. Make it sound scary. If they buy one, go all sad and serious.

There's not going to be any significant (like, existentially damaging) legal or financial punishment. But a big enough drop in sales, even short term, might be the "whiff of grapeshot" that could discourage them and others from breaking security _out of the box_ for a few dollars.

<comment><USER3> _There 's not going to be any significant (like, existentially damaging) legal or financial punishment._

I wouldn't be a 100% about that. Things like this have a way of trundling along until a big enough atrocity happens, and then the system will react, often overreact. Arthur Andersen is a good and recent example of the latter, verdict reversed unanimously on appeal to the Supremes, but the company was long dead by then. And it had been one of the "Big Five" accounting firms.

Which is not to say I'm not also following a policy of punishing them in the market.</comment></comment>


Microsoft SVC - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2014

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I didn't see the earlier discussion here the first time around [1].

Leaving my submission on anyway, for its 'insider' perspective.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8336954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8336954)</comment>


Is Anti-Woke Becoming the New Woke? - <AUTHOR> https://areomagazine.com/2020/01/21/is-anti-woke-becoming-the-new-woke/ <comment><AUTHOR> See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory)

</comment><comment><USER2> Unfortunately, I have no faith in the HN audience's ability to actually read the article rather than just assuming that it's yet another standard takedown of wokeness and initiating the usual anti-woke CJ that the article describes.</comment>


Apple calls for lower corporation tax - grey-area http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/21/apple-wants-single-digit-corporate-tax

<comment><AUTHOR> Apple's calling a single digit tax rate a "reasonable rate"? You've got to be kidding me. Apple's profits have astounding for years and it's not like the taxes have hurt it (to be fair, they've been legally sheltering money offshore in low-tax areas). This is a completely self-serving suggestion on Apple's part. This won't benefit the US economy; it will benefit Apple shareholders.</comment>


Google's uncensored letter to the FCC regarding the Google Voice app rejection - <AUTHOR> http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/our-complete-letter-to-fcc-regarding.html

<comment><AUTHOR> So the very interesting part is the very top of page 4 - where Google claims that Phil Schiller himself informed Google's Senior VP of Engineering and Research of the rejection of the Google Voice app.

This directly contradicts what Apple says in their letter, in which they very flatly state that the app is not rejected.

In addition, Apple seems to question certain functions of the GV app, saying they're not sure how it works and are concerned about various aspects of the app. This is pure speculation on my part, but if the two companies were communicating at such a high level then it seems rather far-fetched that a) Apple would not reveal those concerns to Google and b) that Google would not respond and, if necessary, modify the application to address those concerns.

It's certainly interesting.</comment>


NASA Rejection Letter to Woman in 1962 Was Blunt - <AUTHOR> http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/nasa-rejection-letter-to-woman-in-1962-was-blunt--no-girls-allowed-181854889.html

<comment><USER2> What the early NASA program did in the 50's and 60's was only made possible by accepting risks that would curdle the blood of today's risk-averse NASA administration. The U.S. has a long history of very chivalrously protecting its women-folk from such "front-line" service. It wasn't until 1988 that the first female pilot was cleared for combat in the USAF, let alone test-pilot duty! The U.S. army, unlike many of its allies, still does not permit women in front line combat, although they have announced their intention to change this.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/24/us-usa-military- wo...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/24/us-usa-military-women- idUSBRE90M1FI20130124)

Reflecting the danger of the job, the first few classes of astronauts were required, by president Eisenhower's directive, to be military test pilots. These were men whose profession necessarily required them to accept a large degree of risk. Had one of these early missions resulted in fatalities the government would have been able to draw on past experience explaining the death of test pilots to the public. This requirement would not change until 1965 when scientists holding PhD's would be permitted into the program. This explains why NASA was not considering women in 1962. None existed that met the President's requirements. If you want to call somebody sexist for rejecting Miss Kelly, look no further than the oval office!

Valentina Tereshkova, for comparison, was not a military test pilot, or even a pilot at all. She was experienced with parachuting, but only in an amateur capacity. She did not compete with men and become an astronaut purely based on merit. The USSR's space program decided specifically to send a woman into orbit as a political statement and to see how female physiology stood up to space travel. Several women were considered for this honor and Tereshkova was chosen as much for her proletariat background as her parachuting experience. The first woman in space was a symbol, nothing more.

The second woman in space, and the first to perform a space walk, would not come along for another 19 years. Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya was a test pilot and a real cosmonaut, not just a symbol. She deserves the credit Tereshkova usually gets. Sally Ride would become the U.S.'s first female astronaut a year after Savitskaya's first mission, but this was only made possible by the perception of relative safety offered by the shuttle program and NASA's creation of the mission specialist class of astronauts. Had the challenger disaster occurred prior to Ride's first mission, it's very possible the U.S. might still have yet to send a female astronaut into space.

</comment><comment><USER3> And barely over a year later, Valentina Tereshkova kicks NASA in the teeth. Wonder how Mr. Lloyd felt when that happened.

> Original Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton wrote in 1970 to future NASA > astronaut Marsha Ivins, 'The exact time when we would seriously consider > women is indefinite, but I am sure it is inevitable.'"

NASA was most definitely a boys club back in the day. I mean, you can see the old footage of the guys dealing with the Apollo 13 mess ( [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOKVHhFVJU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOKVHhFVJU) whoever chose the music for that should have been fired ) you can see just how much testosterone was in the air... along with the cigarette smoke.

It's a strange dichotomy that the "Free world" was less free to women at the time than a Communist country.

<comment><USER4> I think you are confused. Valentina Tereshkova was selected by the USSR not for any noble reason, but for the equally sexist-reasons "Miss Kelly" was denied -- because she was a woman.

If you think the USSR was less sexist than the USA in the 50s and 60s, you are vastly mistaken.

<comment><USER3> How about we ask a former communist?

[http://lunardefensecorps.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-ussr- women...](http://lunardefensecorps.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-ussr-womens- rights-and-feminism.html)

<comment><USER4> I'd prefer to read some scholarly articles/books on the topic (most of which agree with my claim):

From: Sisterhood and Socialism: The Soviet Feminist Movement Rochelle Ruthchild Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies , Vol. 7, No. 2 (1983), pp. 4-12

 _For the Club Maria, the "tragedy of women" is the reeminent example of the moral crisis of Soviet communism, the hypocrisy, the abandonment of spiritual values. For Mamonova, the Soviet system, despite its great promise, has become simply the same old sexist wolf in socialist clothing._

Soviet Sisterhood, a relatively wide-spread book by Barbara Holland, was even more critical of what feminists call the "patriarchy."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sex discrimination is serious issue, but there are also other forms of discrimination nobody cares about.

European Space Agency does not take job applications from people over 55. Not even for desk based jobs such as administrator or software developer. And this is public agency which supports equal oportunities :-)

[http://www.esa.int/hr/PDF/ESA-VN- ESTEC-2012-091,REV.1.pdf](http://www.esa.int/hr/PDF/ESA-VN- ESTEC-2012-091,REV.1.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Oh this is symptomatic of a larger problem of age discrimination in Europe. People have zero problem firing old people explicitly for their age. Many academic institutions have hard set requirements for retirement at 65. It's very very hard to work in to your 80s in Europe like it is in the US. (My experience more of less limited to academia)

The idea (originating from France as far as I can tell) is that if you fire all the old folks you will make more room for a younger generation. It's a theory that has been disprove again and again. It's also why they try to cut the work week. If everyone can only work 30 hours then there will be more jobs! (Except it never ends up happening)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The NASA rejection is somewhat unsurprising, because at that point in the space program astronauts were drawn from the military. Of Apollo 11's three crew, all three were in the military, and Armstrong and Aldrin both saw combat in Korea. It wasn't until 1993 that the Air Force allowed women to fly fighters on combat missions.

It's actually quite amazing to me how far women have come since the 1960's. They went from essentially zero representation in the business world to occupying substantial positions of power in just a few generations.

<comment><USER8> >"just a few generations"

Side question, wouldn't this be in less than a generation? After all most of those born in 1960 are very much alive and kicking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There was a good article by James Oberg in The Space Review about this, recently:

[http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2310/1](http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2310/1)

The response to the original letter seems very blunt, but the original letter was written on the day of John Glenn's flight - back then, the requirement to be an astronaut was to be a test pilot.

</comment><comment><USER10> To be fair to the 1962 NASA, they did say "women", not "girls." It's still blatant sexism, but there's need to hyperbolize.

Unless of course all you care about is generating linkbait.

</comment><comment><USER11> At least it was not a resume black hole. It even came with a real signature...

<comment><USER12> And they addressed the question. Unlike the letter to a 7-year old boy at the bottom of the article:

> "I heard that you are sending two people into Mars and I would like to come, > but I'm seven so I can't," 7-year-old Dexter Walters first wrote to NASA. "I > would like to come in the future. What do I need to do to become an > astronaut?"

> The response, from the agency's office of communications, told Walters, > "NASA wants you to know that your thoughts and ideas to further space > exploration are important, and we hope that you will continue to learn all > you can about NASA's space programs, missions, and accomplishments."

They didn't tell him what he needs to do at all, just that they hope he continues to learn about it. Sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Frankly I think the letter is worded fine, and makes strong effort to be polite. If one is suggesting the exclusion of women astronauts is the issue, then that is a different thing entirely.

</comment><comment><USER14> Funny story, my grandfather was an engineering grad who joined the RCAF during WW2. He survived the war, and soon afterwards - I presume during the Gemini recruitment drive - heard that NASA was looking for people with, basically, his CV - technical/engineering background with piloting skills.

So, he applied, but was rejected. The reason? He was an alien, and NASA could not hire aliens. Seriously.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't a woman get a similar response from the Army if applying to join a front-line combat unit? (assuming such a policy of exclusion still exists).

</comment><comment><USER16> the "nor do we plan to have one" seemed unnecessary and mean.

<comment><USER17> Quite the opposite. It's better to get a straight answer than to be left hanging on a maybe.

You ever been in an airport where they have a delay, and every hour they tell you it will be another hour?

Can't they just say 6 hours from the start?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Different era is different. Plenty written today, perfectly in tune with current right-thinking cutting-edge mores, will appear comically quaint and unjust 50 years from now.</comment>


Tour of Blizzard HQ - <AUTHOR> http://leenks.com/gallery1021.htm

<comment><USER2> How elaborate can your shrine to the self be before it becomes hazardous?

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of the time I went to visit Valve Software HQ. Oddly enough, while I was there, I caught Gabe Newell playing WoW: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/timdorr/2444960854/>

To date, that is still my most viewed photo on my Flickr account. Number 9? Me dressed up as a ninja: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/timdorr/485704826/> _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER4> I liked the picture of the building directory. First floor, tons of departments...third floor, tons of departments...second floor, one item: World of Warcraft.

<comment><USER5> Considering the scale and dynamics of that game, an entire floor is a necessity. I think at this point so much of Blizzard's revenue is tied to World of Warcraft that they have the ability to throw whatever resources are needed at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Library envy. The alphabetically sorted games, oh my - and more than two shelves just for "A". Very orderly, things there are.

Edit: of course I sort my games biographically...

</comment><comment><USER7> At our small office, there's currently a four-foot snowman standing in a doorway. It makes me do a double-take when I come across it first thing in the morning before I turn the lights on.

I think I'd turn and run if I came across some of the stuff in that place in the half-light at 7am!

</comment><comment><USER8> I can deal with the fact that the tech company I work for doesn't have anywhere near the cool stuff that Blizzard HQ does... but the grass, really? Does the grass have to be so green? I want to eat a sandwich in that grass.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice. Although, half way through I started scrolling faster and faster...

</comment><comment><USER10> Nothing says "I would never want to work there" more than a giant bronze compass with corpspeak at the cardinal points and a sword wielding maniac riding a spiky cat in the center.

<comment><USER10> errr, Battleaxe.. not sword. obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If only their MMO wasn't so damn addictive...I had to quit a year ago for the sake of my studies and career :)

Love to play again tho.</comment>


Tinder Auto-Matcher Bot - verdie-g https://github.com/verdie-g/tinder-auto-matcher <comment><AUTHOR> >Q: I didn't get any match even tough Tinder tells me that I >got X+ likes!?

>A: Several reasons could explain that: >[...] >They are not in your elo anymore [...]

Kinda creepy that you can like a person, that person likes you too, and yet the algorithm might override your choice and decide to not create the match.

<comment><USER2> What kind of elo do you have on tinder anyway?

<comment><USER3> It's a combination of how many people are swiping left/right on you and the ELO of said people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey, this is pretty cool! I made something similar but I was doing image comparison via cross-correlation template matching using OpenCV: [https://github.com/jidicula/tinderizer](https://github.com/jidicula/tinderizer).

A small correction to your README though:

> These pictures are in very low definition though.

There is a way to access the original (highest) resolution of the submitted images through the API. My code picks the lowest-res one though since I'm doing image comparisons.

However, looking at what the output is now, it looks like Tinder has tightened up their API since I wrote this. It used to be the case that each teaser profile that likes you would have all of its images accessible through the API. This is no longer the case, and only 1 image is accessible for each profile that likes you.

</comment><comment><USER5> Dating sites definitely need some ML and AI thrown at them for the user, so we can make basic decision trees and save ourselves time and effort.

Is there an actual person in the photos? Is it obvious which person it is? Are there any that aren't close up selfies? Are there any close up selfies? Are they smiling? Any red flags like pictures of Machu Picchu or marathons or massive glasses of alcohol or teardrop tattoos under the left eye?

We can visually identify thousands of species of birds at this point, surely computer science can tackle this important problem next, no?

<comment><USER6> At the very least, dating sites should have all the data they need to figure out what a user's "type" might be and prioritize profiles matching that type.

<comment><USER7> This was the entire idea behind OkCupid. Strong analytics and lots of Q&A to match you with people based on "compatibility".

Turns out people don't give a shit about compatibility, they just want to date hot people. Figures.

<comment><USER8> People did. OKC didn't.

OKC pivoted to volume and frequency of swipes over quality of matches, the superficial engagement metric that generally ruins content.

<comment><USER7> Well yes but that all happened after the Match Group acquisition a few years ago (right about the time they introduced "swiping"). Before that it was all algo and profiles... and OKC didn't have a rep for being any better than all the other dating sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the way this is written. Did you use anything to generate the models and JsonProperty annotations?

<comment> verdie-g Vim macros mostly :D</comment></comment>


Harvard Law professor agrees to represent Weinstein, students traumatized - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/triggered-by-weinsteins-harvard-lawyer-11552950103 <comment><USER2> Trauma, like war veterans have when the sustain severe injury in battle? Or is this the trauma of someone not agreeing with your opinion? I do not understand the precise nature of the trauma.

<comment><USER3> This is more along the lines of a kid growing up around an alcoholic parent. If they don't see the parent as a reliable source of safety, it hampers 'normal' development. Psychologists call this attachment trauma. What happens in War is a different story.

The kids here are saying give us an environment where we don't have to waste mental energy worrying about the reliability of the authority figure. Valid imho. Especially if I was footing the bill.

<comment><USER2> Are you comparing the Harvard students emotional development to that of children? I understand your point about children, but not how it applies to these young adults.

<comment><USER3> Emotional development requires trust. Whether it's a child, young adult or a trained soldier once they loose Trust in an authority figure, getting them to follow, learn from, obey said authority figure is not straight forward. It's quite a complex process to restore trust once it's gone.

<comment><USER2> Complex, yes, but you understand it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> jump paywall: [https://outline.com/ZZ7UW3](https://outline.com/ZZ7UW3)</comment>