The myth of the eight-hour sleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783 <comment><USER2> I am really into 'do what works for you'. You may find that that sleeping in two 4 hour blocks changes your life. You feel alive!

Alternatively you may find yourself more tired. Personally I like sleeping 8-9 hours a night. I find myself fairly alert a few minutes after I wake up and I can start my day. It certainly doesn't feel 'unnatural' to me.

I am also a big fan of sleeping when other people sleep so I can enjoy time with friends and family. Unusual sleep patterns typically mean missing out on some of this time.

<comment><USER3> You don't feel like you over slept after 9 hours of sleep?

Either way I have to agree with doing what works for you. I always made an attempt to sleep a full 8 hours and failed. I get by on 4-5 hours of sleep a night and feel fine!

<comment><USER4> I find my acceptable waking points occur in 1.5 hour sleep cycles, and how many I need depends on how mentally taxing the stuff I'm working on is. For ordinary work, stuff I know how to do fairly well already, I need 8 hours. If I'm learning something new or putting in long hours that require concentration, I'll need 9.5 hours. If I'm thrown into a completely new situation - say, I need to decide the architecture of my startup and learn 3-4 new frameworks all at once, or I've just moved cross-country and started a new job - I'll need 11 hours. I can also function on 6.5 hours but feel pretty crummy, and there's a noticeable performance penalty for anything that requires concentration (math, computer programming, etc). On 4 hours of sleep, I'm a zombie - I do okay with everyday tasks and social interaction (with people I know), but can't really learn anything new and retain it. Curiously, I _feel_ better on 4 hours of sleep than on 6.5, 9.5, or 11 - I'm more alive and less groggy, I just notice that my performance on external measures declines.

I recall in the 2010 there were a bunch of athletes that all said the secret to their success - besides training hard - was getting 9 hours of sleep at night. IIRC both Sasha Cohen and Shaun White mentioned it.

I think I'd also read brain research that REM sleep (which tends to be back- loaded towards the end of the night) is when your brain converts experiences from that day from short-term memory into long-term skillsets. That'd be consistent with my experience that more mentally demanding tasks require more sleep, and the experience of those Olympic athletes, and that I don't really suffer a short-term penalty from lack of sleep, it's more a long-term problem.

<comment><USER5> But how do you do this? You wake up and go to sleep again and again? I wake up naturally after 7 or 8 hours, would be kinda hard for me to sleep 11.5 hours.

<comment><USER4> I find that I'll often come up to a point of half-consciousness at about 8/9.5/11 hours, but as long as I don't sit up or get out of bed or start checking my e-mail on my phone, it's pretty easy to fall back asleep.

Whether I want to depends on how much mental activity I've been doing; I'm far more likely to think "That was a nice dream, I don't wanna get out of bed yet" if I've got a thorny challenging problem in my head than if I'm like "Gotta get into work and start coding."

<comment><USER6> I think it also depends how much light you have in the room. I think you would find it easier to sleep longer if the room was still dark after 8 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is only one study in this article, and it involves how a group of people adapted to a 14-hour sleep pattern. Other than that, there are no studies of importance here, nothing that confirms concretely that this kind of segmented sleep is effective for humans. It is based on historical hearsay but cannot make a prescriptive judgment. The evidence purely anecdotal. Please be careful in reading things like this that you do not immediately form a blind belief or justification.

<comment><USER8> Also, don't Spanish people and sailors sleep in segmented blocks? Not exactly newsworthy, then.

<comment><USER9> Link to relevant article for people who are interested: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siesta>.

<comment><USER10> Siesta (midday nap) is very common in Bolivia, Mexico and other Latin American countries, but I'd hesitate to call it segmented sleep.

<comment><USER11> Not to detract from your main point, but I don't think Siesta is very common in Mexico and most other Latin American countries. I was born in Cuba, lived there for five years and lived in Mexico for about three or four. I don't know of a single person who regularly slept after noon.

In fact, I had an opportunity to live in Barcelona for three months and while a lot of businesses do close down from noon to three, I got the impression that people were not using that time to sleep, and that the idea of siesta in Catalunya is on the decline.

<comment><USER10> Ok, I did work for Bolivia for a time, and our Bolivian office closed for siesta, as did our main customer (the La Paz city council).

Same for a more rural area of Mexico (Toluca surroundings), they also did siestas there.

Googling a bit, acording to Time magazine, siesta was struck down in Mexico in 1944, so it's more a myth than reality now I guess (probably subsists in some more rural areas).

[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,850501,00.h...](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,850501,00.html)

My impression was that siesta still persisted in some countries, but that it tends to disappear as they conform to western work hours, and, as the Time article states, it does involve four commutes instead of two, so it's not workable in urban areas (btw, people who siesta still work the same amount of hours, I'm not saying they work less).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The New York Times took on this topic a few years back in a very good article that argued that the whole idea of the 8-hour sleep was invented by the mattress industry (and other purveyors of sleep products), and that humans don't need anywhere near 8 hours of continuous sleep.

Ironically, all of the industry's marketing makes people anxious about getting enough sleep--and makes it harder for them to get to sleep (thus propagating the need for more expensive mattresses and pillows.)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18sleep-t.html?pa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18sleep-t.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER13> Western consumerism is going to change human lives for bad.

<comment><USER14> Then again, it's already changed human lives for the better as well. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have... the facts of life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oh my God. This could change my life.

One lifelong problem I've got is sleeping. I have great trouble falling asleep, and my sleeping patterns are very uncommon: some days I sleep 12 hours, some 5, but I'm usually very tired because of this. However, I used to think I had a "gift" of being really creative and having my best ideas just before sleep, just waking up, and during insomnia episodes. However, I've discovered that many suffer from this phenomena (anyone here?). This article could explain a lot!

<comment><USER16> You're definitely not alone. Extraordinary insight and creativity, rich, vivid, inspired and out-of-the-box thinking, are typical for "twilight" states, when you're floating between waking state and sleep; not fully awaken to the outside world, but not fully unconscious either. The only problem is replicating and maintaining these states.

It is sometimes possible to remain fully aware in what is essentially a full- on dream state. This is the best of both worlds, combining the rationality and critical thinking of the waking state, with the unbound creativity of the dream. It's like opening up the firehose of new ideas, while remaining in control.

I am fairly certain that at least some of the unusual claims made by people who practice meditation a lot (such as having access to a higher "wisdom", etc.) are based on gaining a measure of control over these states. For this reason, I think it's worth exploring some of the traditional meditation systems, seen as empirical "brain hacking" techniques. I'd love to see more research done in this field; some of Sam Harris' work is relevant.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the insight. As a matter of fact, I do meditate :) From my experience (nothing scientific), to replicate these states, what you need is to shut down your rational mind. You see, everyone has in there mind a small voice going "hey, I like this lamp" or "mmm I forgot to do something". This voice is your rational, conscious part of your "self". However, it's not your entire "self". Meditation aims at quieting this "voice" (it's really hard, and I'm not there yet). Once its quiet, you've got "space" for actual inspiration to come in, and once this happens it's amazing, and can happen in many levels. That's why meditation is a mystical experience. Mystical means that it is not possible to communicate via ideas, just by personal experience. If you get good at it you can actually control you emotional states and LISTEN to them, bringing you a lot of wellbeing in many ways. (ok, I'm waaay off topic, sorry).

<comment><USER17> That sounds pretty interesting. Any suggestion on books or ofher resources for peope new to meditation? How did you get started with meditation?

<comment><USER15> I'm far from being an expert, but I learned this type of meditation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation> from a guy my mother hired to teach all my family. There are many different meditations and practices, and I've actually never read a book about just meditation but I recommend books by Osho and Deepak Chopra (just google'em) to have insight on Indian practices and philosophy. I would recommend to reach out any yoga institution around town and ask. It's better to learn from someone than from a book, and, as cliché as it sounds, if you are looking for it, the appropriate practice will come to you.

<comment><USER16> > _as cliché as it sounds, if you are looking for it, the appropriate practice > will come to you_

Yeah. Keep looking for the right career / hobby / spiritual path / etc., and it will likely come to you. Provided you are sincere and are actually looking.

I've a different bias, myself, but to each his own. The various buddhist techniques also seem well suited for the western skeptics, since they typically don't require adherence to any theology at all. You could practice Zen and be a total agnostic or atheist. "Brain hacking" in its purest form. YMMV.

I find Zen difficult, myself. Feels too... um... dry, for lack of a better word. I require something that engages the emotional apparatus, and the physical base, in a more active fashion. I guess this is like preferring Python over Ruby over Perl over etc.etc.etc. Everyone's different.

<comment><USER15> Haha I never heard anyone compare Zen to Python. Point granted, anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My brother in law is a "sleep scientist" at UPenn.

His recommendation is that sleep cycles typically happen in 4 hour intervals so it's best to sleep 4 or 8 hours a night.

Getting up int he middle of a sleep cycle is often as bad as getting less than 4 hours of sleep.

And going to bed drunk is the worst for your sleep cycle.

<comment><USER19> I can believe this. One time I had 2 hours to sleep where I normally get 7 or 8 a night. I felt way worse the next day then if I hadn't slept at all. It was like my fight or flight response went haywire and I felt jittery and anxious all day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google ngram explorer has the term 'first sleep' peaking in use in English Language circa 1870, before declining ~80% to present day. <http://bit.ly/zt8AfD>

Tough to say if this was a 19th century phenomenon or was persistent through history based on the structure of their corpus.

<comment><USER21> It does not seem to be relevant, as it seems to track along with the general use of the word 'sleep'

<http://i.imgur.com/4AtC1.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Isn't this the proverbial midnight? You went to sleep for about four hours, then woke to have a midnight snack.

<comment><USER23> Makes me wonder whether we're now (mostly) sleeping through midnight because eating more carbs acclimates us to extremes of blood sugar and insulin levels, letting the midnight food craving pass unnoticed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would have been nice if there were some actionable items. What are the best segments? Is there something wrong if I can sleep 8 hours without trouble?

Does anyone have links to more research, perhaps with something a little more actionable of a conclusion?

<comment><USER25> The article suggests that it's natural to take two four hour sleep sessions, intermediated by a one to two hour break.

I think that this bears out to what many of us are experiencing, and the idea to consider is simply to stop worrying about it and embrace it. The 'second sleep' is likely getting cut short, because we are not budgeting for the break.

I consistently tend to find myself daydreaming during this part of the night, anxious (as the article notes) about not sleeping. So personally, I'm just going to continue doing this without worry, and _budget time for it_. Duh, right? Why didn't I think of that before? It makes perfect sense now after reading the article.

I may even go wild and actually get up and do things for an hour or two every night, you know, for science.

Many thanks to the poster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am going to try for a week or two. Having nearly 12 hours dedicated to work, I only have 4 exhausted hours in the evenings for eating dinner, spending time with my wife, kids and myself.

If my wife and I split our sleep cycle into two 4 hour periods we can better spend my four hours of free time.

The waking period between my commute and first sleep could be spend eating dinner, playing with the kids, and exercise. After my first sleep I can spend time with my wife, and study with a rested mind. Theoretically it seems like a good idea. We'll see how I cope after a week or two of trying.

</comment><comment><USER27> For a long time I've wanted to cut myself off and figure out a natural sleep cycle. Normally (for better or for worse), I sleep 5-6 hours a night during the week, then get 8-9 on the weekends, but that's definitely shaped to the work week.

Also, maybe interesting - two 4 hour sleep cycle with a couple hours between is what happens naturally to me after a night of too much drinking. I wonder if there's some reason for that.

<comment><USER28> I believe I've read that all the alcohol processing eventually makes your blood sugar drop very low which is when you wake up (if you're like me, around 6-7am after going to bed at 3). Then of course, you're not very rested from little sleep (and not very high quality sleep) so you probably go back down for a few more hours.

<comment><USER29> Maybe that could explain why the segmented sleep pattern was considered normal way back when. I don't imagine there was a whole lot for people to do in the evenings besides drink =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep> has some interesting links

</comment><comment><USER31> Sleep is weird. If I wake up in the middle of the night and go back to sleep... I feel like ass the next day. If I get less than eight hours I'm pretty tired the next day.

But science says that shouldn't happen!?

Not enough evidence to suggest that there's any kind of regularity to how humans "should" sleep yet.

<comment><USER32> It is even more weird than that. From my and some friend's experience: if you sleep more then 9 hours straight, instead of usual 6-8 (this happens on weekends usually), I feel really terrible in the morning - not being able to get out of bed, but in the same time not being able to sleep. Finally when I get out of bed - I feel really trashed for next several hours.

So it is not just less than 8 hours makes things worse, same applies to more then 8 hours. So it is either I have to sleep 6-8 hours only, or I have adapted to this schedule so well, that anything else makes me feel terrible.

On the other hand, I have handful examples of me traveling with few flight changes, timezones changes, more than 30 hours in flights/airports, and after getting to my destination I spent full 16 hours day working or meeting with friends just fine. May be a little dizzy. And after consequent 8 hours sleep night - feel great next day.

This suggest, that it (8 hours sleep requirement) is more than just a something "hardwired" in to human's body...

Yes, sleep is weird.

<comment> just-a-rascal Often when you wake up after sleeping longer than usual (say more than 9 hours) you feel tired because of dehydration. Your body loses a fair bit of water while you sleep, so that might be reason you feel bad after a lie-in.

<comment><USER33> I have anecdote to confirm this. I stay well hydrated, and drink more water than most people I know, will generally sip on a glass by my bed, and have a glass of water by my bed at night. I have also been able to sleep over 12 hours (generally waking up at least once to use the restroom and water) Yet I feel fantastic when I do such!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just get rid of your alarm clock, and wake up when your body tells you to.

<comment><USER35> hm, sorry to ask, but: are you employed?

most folks I know, including me, have serious problems with sleep. it seems like we tap into each corner of human body and understand less or more how it works, but yet there is no real science behind how sleep works and how much of it we need. Heck, afaik scientists still argue why we need sleep at all and whats the main reasoning behind it. But not to brag too much: sometimes it happens to me that I sleep less hours and am more refreshed than sleeping longer, or even legit 7 or 8. I guess I just hit the right spot at the right time and REM phases worked out. If someone comes up with a device that can help you sleep not too long not to short so you always wake up fresh, I think he/she will nail a billion dollar idea!

<comment><USER36> I'm employed. I don't use alarms. I just go to bed early enough so that I'll naturally want to wake up in time for work.

<comment><USER35> so you should say that.

this:

> Just get rid of your alarm clock, and wake up when your body tells you to.

means you are telling me and everyone else to get a rid of your [mine] alarm clock.

Guess not everyones body acts the same, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have never slept for 8hrs, not even close. I sometimes wonder how people can sleep for that long and what their jobs and life's must be like. After 5-7hrs I usually wake up feeling totally refreshed and ready to go (even better after my first coffee ;))

<comment><USER32> You are lucky :) Some math - 1 hour a day less sleep than "normal" people give you:

1 hr * 365 days / 24 hours in day ~ 15 days.

And these are 24hours day. What it really should be:

1 hr * 365 days / (24 hours in day - 6 hours you sleep on average) ~ 21 days.

Which is, well, in office terms, work month :) congrats, you got 1/12 life for free :)

<comment><USER38> I don't think sleep can be counted out of life.

Dreams are the most beautiful things to ever happen to humans. I have always lived two lives one in dreams and one while am awake.

And some experiences that I've had dreaming just can't be had while I'm awake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is great, I've always worried about being or feeling awake for long periods at night. What doesn't seem clear though is whether I should be setting aside 10 hours a night for sleep (two 4 hour cycles + 2 waking hours in between)

</comment><comment><USER40> There's a Zen saying relevant to the article (and to much of the discussion here). Rather than wringing your hands over "optimal sleep", I suggest trying it out. If your schedule allows, it can work wonders:

 _When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep._

</comment><comment><USER41> Interesting article. I usually sleep from 7pm - 10pm, wake up and do stuff (like read HN), then sleep again from 3am - 8am, with just enough time to get ready for work in the morning.

Not too long ago I suffered from minor insomnia and lucid dreaming. It was awful, to the point where I started to dread bedtime. For me, my diet at the time (fatty foods + sugar + caffeine + alcohol) had a lot to do with it, so once I committed to a healthy diet, my body settled back into a consistent sleep cycle. I guess it's really what works for you.

</comment><comment><USER42> I experience two sleeps sometimes when I'm not alone or when I drink a lot. If I'm alone, I usually read for an hour, and if I'm not alone, reading is the second choice. I always go back to sleep easily and get my full allotment. Until I read this article, it never occurred to me that I might be able to have that experience every night. Honestly, it sounds wonderful; sign me up to be in the vanguard. Now if only I could figure out how to make it happen when I'm alone and not drunk!

</comment><comment><USER43> This would be an interesting opportunity for Zeo or Fitbit to chime in on this if they were to mine their data, anonymize it and publish something about their users sleep patterns.

<comment><USER44> There are a few mobile sleep timer apps that could also contribute data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> According to my Bodymedia Fit, I almost never ever get a true 8 hours or more of sleep. Sure, I lay down at 10 PM or so and get up at 6 AM or later, but if this little device is as accurate as they claim it really opened my eyes that I was never getting 8 hours, when I thought I actually was. It says normally I get between 6 and 7 hours.

Edit: I'm curious what the recommended amount of sleep, or if it really is an individual thing per 24 hour or so period.

</comment><comment><USER46> There is some problem with the title of the article. It could also mean that you dont need 8 hours of sleep. Other point is the need for sleep varies with age. Babies sleep for very long time like 14 hours; old people need only 5 to 6 hours of sleep. The 8 hour sleep is for youth between 25 and 40 i think. Otherwise, very original point, I have never thought sleeping in 4-hour chunks was natural.

</comment><comment><USER47> Not that I know anything about this, but isn't it possible that having this segmented sleep could possibly be _bad_ for you? Just because our ancestors slept as such doesn't mean it's necessarily good for you, does it? (That's not to say it couldn't be good, just that I don't understand why the article seems to imply that it necessarily must be good.)

</comment><comment><USER48> Has anyone ever read <http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm> or put it through any verification? It looks good but I'm no biologist, I've used it as my basis for years to avoid polyphasic schedules and embrace naps and biphasic sleep when my life allows for it.

</comment><comment><USER49> I have this weird sleep pattern, where I sleep from around 5pm-7pm or 7.30pm without an alarm clock, I am sleeping very deeply, always dreaming and really hard to wake me up (I don't notice the phone ringing right next to me) and then I'm sleeping from 1am to 6am, where I usually don't remember dreaming and where I wake up very easily

</comment><comment><USER50> Interesting. Some of the lucid dreaming techniques try to capitalize on the split sleep schedule by taking melatonin before the first segment(induces a REM-less, deep sleep for the most part) and other supplements (vitamin B6, etc) before the second segment, resulting in a longer, more vivid dreaming session.

</comment><comment><USER51> "In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month."

'Plunging' people into 14 hours of darkness per day? Does this sound like a scientifically sound way to determine the natural sleeping patterns of humans?

<comment><USER52> Subtract artificial light, and how long would you be "plunged" into darkness every night this time of year at your latitude? Enforcing prehistoric lighting conditions at night and observing the resulting sleep pattern seems like a decent of finding someone's "natural" sleep pattern to me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> My sleep is a lot more deep when I regularly sleep around 7 hours. Anything less or over makes me restless. I think I am going to try this. If I get up in middle of night, I will work for an hour or two and when I feel sleepy, I will go to bed.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've kept a sleep pattern of 4-5 hours by accident, and I don't seem to function any less efficiently than when I sleep 8 or more hours. I do end up taking a nap on occasion, but that's still 6-7 hours, not 8.

</comment><comment><USER55> Some recent studies showed that an healthy night seems to be no more than 7 hours.

Segmented sleep is interesting but I don't think a majority of people could balance that with family and work.

<comment><USER56> It rather seems that family and work need to be adjusted to balance them with our natural sleeping rhythm.

<comment><USER57> _Assuming_ that this is in fact out natural sleeping rhythm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> A great page about sleep cycles is this one <http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm>

<comment><USER59> Hah, the Uberman's sleep schedule (six 20 minuted sessions totaling two hours of sleep per day). I remember trying that for a few days after seeing the kuro5hin article way back when. Supposed to take two weeks to adjust, but it was so painful after a few days that I lost faith and feared I getting caught in a hoax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Really? I think this is BS... I don't care about statistics or a 1595 painting or whatever.

What I know is if I sleep less than seven hours I feel like crap during the day.

</comment><comment><USER61> I seem to operate best on a 6 hour block and a 3 hour block. The problem is that doing this my body wants to have a total cycle time around 26 hours.

</comment><comment><USER62> The guy who did this study spent 20 years. He found 500 'references to segmented sleep'. One of which being a painting depicting people not sleeping and sleeping simultaneously.

That's less than one reference every 2 weeks. Either that guy had the most relaxing job in the world, or it is genuinely difficult to find such references. Assuming the latter to give the researcher the benefit of the doubt here; how deep do you have to look before you start to think that maybe this isn't actually that common after all?

Also, how the bbc title reflects this study is beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER63> So if one wanted to try getting into this cycle, do you set an alarm after 4 hours or if you wake up at all naturally in the night, stay up?

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm always tired and sleepy, doesn't matter how many hours I sleep. Taking pills to sleep make me fill dizzy all day long :(

</comment><comment><USER34> While we are on the subject of sleep, does anyone here experience sleep paralysis?

</comment><comment><USER65> <http://sleepyti.me/>

</comment><comment><USER66> I had 10 hours last night. 8 til 6

</comment><comment><USER67> now corporations want you to work more than 9 hours per day.

<comment><USER68> Especially in Asian countries it is considered normal that your workplace demands more than 8 hours. Becoming like that in the USA as well for some.

<comment><USER69> In Europe, or at least Nothern Europe, it feels like working days are actually becoming shorter. I seem to recall 37.5hrs/w being standard for most office workers, at least in Sweden. Will have a look and see if I can find a source later!</comment></comment></comment>


Clojure/West conference has launched - <AUTHOR> http://clojurewest.org/news/2011/11/2/clojurewest-is-launched.html <comment><USER2> It says it on the website, but of particular note is that Alex also runs the Strange Loop conference (<https://thestrangeloop.com/>). Of its three years, I've attended two consecutively, and have had a blast both times, learned many new things, and made great connections.

He also runs groups here in St. Louis that I attend, so that paired with my experiences at his conference lead me to say with confidence that a conference run by him is certainly worth considering.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to have Paul Graham talk at Clojure/West. Seeing as this is HN, if anyone reading this wants to convince him, please do. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately pg can't make it. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone give me a justification for attending a tech conference. I never have attended one in the past an d $450 seems like a lot of money out of my own pocket. I'm interested in writing clojure web apps, but I am not convinced I would benefit enough from this conference to justify the cost. Can someone tell me where I'm wrong?

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure of your employment status, but if you are an employee somewhere, it's quite possible that you can get your employer to at least partially pay your way.

The cost is an interesting thing to attempt to justify, and it depends entirely upon how you take on the conference. If you simply attend, sit in the audience, and listen to some of the talks, with rare exceptions I would argue that the cost isn't worth it for _any_ conference. You'll notice that many conferences put videos of their talks online–for free. There's a reason for this: the talks are not the most valuable aspect of the conference; rather, the rest of the experience at the conference is the precious part.

This isn't to say that the talks are unimportant. The quality of speakers reflects on the quality of the conference as a whole and the speakers set the stage for the great discussion that will flow from there. At a conference, you'll sit in the audience and listen to some really intelligent person speak about a given topic, and people really get into what that person has to say; but the real magic comes just after the speaker finishes. You'll notice that those that really found the talk interesting will rise from their seats and rush to the stage, crowding around the speaker to engage her in discussion. Fellow attendees–speakers or otherwise–will further break off into their own groups to keep the conversation flowing.

So, if you think of a conference as a novel, then imagine the speakers as the main characters. While they keep the plot flowing, it's really the other characters–the attendees–that tie everything together and make the main characters worthwhile.

Additionally, you'll find yourself thrown into a large group of people where you are both stronger than others in some areas and weaker than other attendees in different areas. This tends to be any geek's best dream–you're simultaneously around people from whom you can learn and to whom you can impart knowledge, which means that you're in an environment that fosters creativity and open discussion.

You won't remember everything that you learn at a conference. That isn't the point. Instead, you'll be introduced to a wide range of new ideas, and you'll take that new perspective back to work or other areas of your life and apply it accordingly. For example, I saw Nathan Marz's talk at Strange Loop 2011, where he open-sourced Storm. For days after (and, frankly, even as I was working on something just the other day), ideas that he put forth in that talk have resonated in my mind, and I've architected solutions to numerous problems in ways that I otherwise would not have imagined, all because I was exposed to a different point of view.

This benefit is what just _one_ speaker has done for me–now imagine how powerful this is when you're exposed to 20, 40, or even 60 different speakers! The benefit continues to grow as you talk not just with speakers, but with fellow attendees as well, absorbing their newly gained snippets of knowledge and sharing some bits of your own.

For these reasons I would say that, while $450 can indeed be a lot of money, it isn't just applied to the two days that you will be at a conference. Instead, it continues to work for you through the lessons learned and–perhaps even more importantly–people met.

<comment><USER3> Those are very good points you brought up especially around the advantages gained from networking. I don't think my company would sponsor me attending this conference. I code in PHP at my current job. I'm using clojure for the startup I'm bootstrapping on the side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cannot wait. I especially like the fact that there will also be training days: being still a "new" language I believe it's nice to make it more appealing for new people.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have several things in the works but would love to hear any ideas you have for more specific training than just "learning the language".

<comment><USER4> Still. For a couple of days of "just learning the language" I'm ready to come all the way from Italy.

; )

Anyway, a few suggestions: \- Clojure for Processing large amount of data (MapReduce); \- Clojure for Web Development; \- Clojure for When Other Languages Are Simply Not Enough(tm).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - we already talking to people about most of those. :)

Also, we _will_ have training for learning the language as well, done by Clojure/core.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Track Clojure/West on Lanyrd here: <http://lanyrd.com/2012/clojurewest/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I find clojure/conj to be a tad too theoretical (at least from paper). Not that I don't like that since I am a language geek anyway, but I think it will be great for Clojure the language to have a more of a "get things done" conference to complement the conj.

<comment><USER6> Do you mind explaining "theoretical"? For example, of the talks listed this year are there any that you would say are theoretical?

<comment><USER5> I guess theoretical is a subjective term.

What I meant to say was that Clojure/conj seems geared towards advanced clojure users, and I think Clojure would benefit of a conference that focuses more on bringing new developers to the fold. From this perspective, more talks about build tools, web development frameworks, useful libraries, etc would be great. I personally think that clojure could use some more evangelization here in the Bay Area, and I believe Clojure/west can do just that.

But I myself attended to the Emerging Languages Conference, so I will definitely enjoy the conj very much, don't get me wrong.

EDIT: I guess I didn't answer part of your question, which is what talks I consider theoretical. Here are some (judging from title and abstract): "Extreme Cleverness: Functional Data Structures in Scala", "Predicate Dispatch", "Concurrent Stream Processing" . Hoping this will help with clarification, this is what I would like to see too at some point: "From concept to production in 40 min: how to create a webapp in clojure", "A survey of Clojure tooling", "Debugging made easy", "Clojure and Hadoop", etc.

<comment><USER6> I do see what you mean. I was afraid that you were getting into the "academic" phrasing, but suspected that I only misunderstood. I too like case-studies and prefer a mix of them and the "theoretical" topics.[1] I would hate to see one excluded in favor of the other, so I am hopeful that Alex and team will put together a great mix.

[1]: Although I think the vast majority of topics that we as programmers talk about are theories.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will brew up a tasty mix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool stuff. I'm very interested in hearing more about how this conference (which I have every confidence will be really great) will complement the Conj.</comment>


A broken memory module hid in plain sight - <AUTHOR> https://chollinger.com/blog/2020/02/how-a-broken-memory-module-hid-in-plain-sight-and-how-i-blamed-the-linux-kernel-and-two-innocent-hard-drives/ <comment><USER2> It can be the other hand round: We once had multiple enterprise class server in a data center that suffered from a strange problem. After a couple of days, sometimes weeks, they stopped working with memory nearly always reported as the culprit. It took some time to find the true reason, which we discovered with the vendor after many hours of analyzing and swapping hardware. The error only occurred when the server was lightly loaded and could be mitigated by disabling the CPU C states entirely in the server configuration. As memory, CPU test or test jobs we had written produced high system load, they never showed any sign of error during test runs because they prevented the CPU from entering higher C states.

<comment><USER3> That shall be the one of the issues with the Xeon E5-26xx[1]. Some state changes produced either reset or unpredictable system behavior. The workaround was disable c-state or patch the microcode when the patch was available.

[1] [https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/processors/xeon/xe...](https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/processors/xeon/xeon-e5-v4-spec- update.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A long time ago I wrote a program for stress testing hard disks. You can download the modern version of it here: [https://github.com/ncw/stressdisk](https://github.com/ncw/stressdisk)

It got used a lot to soak tests disk for servers that were going into production or being shipped out to far away places.

However it quite soon became apparent that a lot of the errors weren't caused by bad disks at all, but rather by bad RAM. It even discovered a set of bad RAM for 200 computers which passed all the manufacturers tests but failed when in use.

Moral of the story: if you care about data integrity check your RAM as well as your disks! I run memtest86 then stressdisk on any new systems I'm building.

Also, testing RAM is hard! Memtest86 does an excellent job, much better than the manufacturers tests.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is why if I care about data on a system, I want that system to have ECC RAM.

Proper burn-in testing helps too; but ECC will help me later after things have aged. Maybe I should add a yearly re-validation to systems.

<comment><USER6> Mostly yeap. Every new memory stick I buy at home gets 30 minutes or so on memtest86. Professionally, it would be a couple of hours. Memory sticks might go "bad" over time, but I would bet it's likely a BGA ball failure. Possibly some directed heat or oven could fix it without having a BGA rework station. The failures-over-time graphs I've seen for memory are similar to those for hard drives: bathtub graphs.

My current build is a borosilicate water-cooled dual Rome EPYC with ½ a TiB of ECC RAM. I already had it planned before the media went gaga over AMD. I just hope prices don't spike too much before I drop what's already going to be $13k to get this done.

PS: 72-bit (64,8) SECDED ECC RDRAM typically uses 4-bit-wide chips in multiples of 18 chips (# = ranks, 36 for 2R), whereas consumer 64-bit DDR4 uses 8-bit chips, in multiples of 8 chips. Also, does anyone remember IBM's Chipkill?

<comment><USER7> RAM does go bad over time. It all is factory tested good before you receive it, so any failures you see are during-lifetime failures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tokamak-teapot I followed a similar route where I eventually got to blaming bad (ECC) RAM, even sending it back to Crucial. In the end though, it wasn't bad RAM. It was a bad RAM socket. This is one reason I'm now allergic to hardware and prefer to have someone else look after it.

<comment><USER8> You had a bad ram socket that silently corrupted data while you used ecc?

<comment> tokamak-teapot No, it crashed the machine when I hit certain addresses. Or rather, when /something/ did. Hitting this part of RAM wasn't predictable, so it was only when I considered that it seemed my crashes happened when the OS might be allocating more RAM than usual that I looked at RAM. I saw errors in memtest86 and blamed the RAM. But then the replacement had a similar problem. And then I switched modules around slots. And then I realised.</comment></comment></comment>


A20 – a pain from the past - <AUTHOR> https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/kbd/A20.html <comment><USER2> (2001)

I assume/hope UEFI booting starts you off with A20 enabled...</comment>


NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions - <AUTHOR> http://dlmf.nist.gov <comment><USER2> Another great resource at NIST: [https://xlinux.nist.gov/dads//](https://xlinux.nist.gov/dads//)</comment>


Ask HN: How and why does Twitter trap its users? - <AUTHOR>

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, when you click on a link to Twitter you are unable to navigate back to the page that gave the link. That's because Twitter somehow disallows you from doing so when pressing the back button and instead keeps you on twitter.com.
For example, look at this article: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/twitter-let-the-tweets-flow/
Then click on the link at the top of the 3rd paragraph that says "#jan25 movement". You should not be able to return to the Wired article unless you click the back button a few times repeatedly. Otherwise, you will alternate between the url's https://twitter.com/#, https://twitter.com/search/%2523jan25#, and https://twitter.com/search/%2523jan25#search?q=%2523jan25. This seems to always be the case when an article links to a Twitter page without opening a new window/tab.
As this is obviously quite frustrating, I was wondering why they have chosen to do it. It'd also be great to hear a technical answer on how they do it if it's not too complicated. <comment><USER2> I can click back just fine on Chrome...

Wikipedia annoys me like this with the mobile web client. If I click through a Google result to wikipedia, it redirects me to m.wikipedia.com and I have to hit back twice to get to Google.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm running Safari 4, just for your information

<comment><USER2> Odd, Safari 5.0.3 (6533.19.4) works fine for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> My mistake, I have Safari 5.0.3 as well. However, I've done some more testing and it seems as if the "bug" only occurs when you're logged out of Twitter. Let me know if that's the same for you.

<comment><USER2> Ah yes, I can confirm that. It's totally hosed when you're logged out since it redirects to the logged-out search page, instead of the integrated one when you're logged in. It also breaks the parameter encoding when it redirects. Nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A couple more details from some experiments I've done:

      • This behavior does not appear in Google Chrome
      • It does appear in Safari 5.0.3, but only when you're logged out of Twitter

</comment><comment><USER3> This problem occurs when redirects are created in javascript by assigning a url to the location object. If instead they use location.replace(href); then no extra item will appear in the history stack and the back button will work as intended.

</comment><comment><USER4> I passed this on to a friend who works at Twitter, who e-mailed it up the chain... so hopefully we'll get a response at some point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! Thank you for doing this. I'm really looking forward to hearing if they have something to say. Please keep us updated with the info that you're allowed to disclose.

<comment><USER4> No problem, but don't get your hopes up! We'll see if anything comes back.

Maybe someone from Twitter will post here...</comment></comment></comment>


You're Almost Definitely More of a Jerk Than You Think You Are - <AUTHOR> https://lithub.com/youre-almost-definitely-more-of-a-jerk-than-you-think-you-are/ <comment><USER2> Wanna make people who suffer with mental health issues, imposter syndrome, and self image issues feel instantly crappy? Write a headline like that.

<comment><USER3> They still might be more of a jerk than they think. Someone with self image issues might still treat others miserably, for example...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Um, but the author _surely_ is exempt, right?

I mean he very clearly thinks he's right about all those "Jerks" being kind of over-inflated.

If he's right, then the very best, very most creative and correct people who have vision and the most (deserved) self-confidence are still "Jerks" if they recognize that any of their peers are bloom'in idjits.

And the bloom'in people taking pot-shots at them, like this author, are then "Not Jerks"...

right... got it.

So unless everyone is exactly equal in worth, nearly everybody with awareness is a "Jerk", and many, but not all, of them are wrong.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's like, your opinion, man. Maybe stop being a jerk and try and see things from my perspective...

I think a jerk is just someone who evades / sabotages communication efforts around the analysis of a given action. Or someone who knowingly holds onto bad assumptions in the presence of new information.

The first line of defense against jerks is communication. It seems that more jerks emerge when communication is stifled and mutual understanding is never reached.

</comment><comment><USER6> I found this an odd article to read. Some of it seemed exceptionally interesting and insightful, while other parts felt very /r/iam14andthisisdeep.

(Maybe my jerkish fraction failed to empathise with some parts!)

</comment><comment><USER7> I really hope that's not true.

</comment><comment><USER8> Good.</comment>


High-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain than sugar (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/ <comment><USER2> Stop giving out corn welfare to corporations and problem solved.

It's the ONLY reason why it's so heavily used.

Corn syrup and ethanol - two massively damaging products of a completely corrupt system that everyone refuses to change because of massive profits off taxpayers.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the laugh. You know you've reached the pinnacle of "first world problems" when a phrase like _corrupt system_ , which has historically been used to describe things like institutional discrimination and genocide, is now used to describe the "horrors" of agricultural subsidies and tariffs. I'm surprised that Amnesty International hasn't updated their corruption index accordingly, which would surely put every sovereign nation's score in the single digits.

<comment><USER4> When high tariffs on the importation of sugar prevents countries from developing their own agriculture industries, it's not just a first world problem. It's BS like this that causes international tension, wars, and famine. This situation isn't as superficial as it may seem on the surface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can find the original paper at [http://www.foodpolitics.com/wp- content/uploads/HFCS_Rats_10....](http://www.foodpolitics.com/wp- content/uploads/HFCS_Rats_10.pdf).

The statistics are a bit confusing to me, but it looks like they only find a significant difference for males over 8 weeks, not females over 7 months. The "significant" difference for males seems pretty small given that the rats started out weighing between 300 and 375 grams. And the conclusion doesn't mention sucrose at all:

 _In summary, rats maintained on a diet rich in HFCS for 6 or 7 months show abnormal weight gain, increased circulating TG and augmented fat deposition. All of these factors indicate obesity. Thus, over-consumption of HFCS could very well be a major factor in the "obesity epidemic," which correlates with the upsurge in the use of HFCS._

Does anyone know if these results have been replicated anywhere?

<comment><USER6> The short study and the long study apparently disagree about whether 12hr or 24hr access to HFCS results in more weight gain. The 8 wk study shows 12hr HFCS leading to much larger weight gain than any of the other groups, and 24hr access not being significantly different from sucrose or chow alone. But then reading the 8 wk number off the weight chart from the 6 month study shows 24hr access being ahead of 12hr access.

You asked if these results have been replicated anywhere--it seems like the beginning of their long study didn't even replicate their short study. This makes me seriously skeptical about the differences they report between HFCS and sucrose.

The only conclusion I would feel very comfortable drawing from this data is that giving rats access to sugar water for 6 months makes them fatter (Fig. 1). Finer distinctions than that seem unwarranted.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. The study is actually deceptive because they're drawing conclusions that aren't supported by their own results. My conclusion: bad science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand the mechanism here. I thought sucrase, the enzyme that breaks down sucrose (table sugar) into 1 fructose and 1 glucose (same as HFCS), acted almost immediately -- at least on the timescale of nutrient absorption. Is it just short circuiting our sense of satiety? Maybe the raw fructose makes things sweeter and stimulates reward centers better?

I wonder where honey falls in all this since it has higher fructose than the most common 55% fructose HFCS blends.

We seem to know so little about all of this, but I think it's safe to say that both sugar and HFCS are bad in quantities that the common american is accustomed.

I find it's best to just avoid sweet foods all together, but if forced to choose I would take HFCS over artificial sweeteners any day of the week. Our bodies have been dealing with glucose and fructose for a very long time -- even on evolutionary time scales. The same can't be said for Sucralos, aspartame, or Acesulfame potassium.

Everything in the world is either overtly or subtly poisonous; the only question is, at what dose?

<comment><USER9> You sound like you are a paid shill. I know that you aren't, which disappoints me further, because I'd like to think that people are capable of educating themselves instead of spreading misinformation.

On your first paragraph, pondering whether sucrose breaks down into fructose and glucose immediately: No, it doesn't. HFCS makes sugars available to the bloodstream sooner, causing larger swings in overall blood sugar levels. Additionally, this study covers rats which were given strict diets; the idea that HFCS made them fatter because they ate more food is not borne out based on the experiment's premises.

Second paragraph: Irrelevant. Honey is not being discussed here. Additionally, you contradict yourself by noting (correctly) that HFCS is not half-and-half fructose and glucose, like sucrose.

Third paragraph: Inverted appeal to authority. You dismiss the information that science makes available, and then put your own opinion up for offering as if it is informed and accurate. You further confuse the issue by putting a well-accepted opinion (the diets of the USA are overly rich in sugars) next to a dismissal of this study.

Fourth paragraph: A delightful strawman, substituting artificial sweeteners for table sugar.

Fifth: More ignorance of the general study of nutrition, with a sweeping statement that is obviously true and yet completely uninformative.

Please go _read the article_ before commenting further.

<comment><USER8> Wow. I think you severely miss-read my comment as some formal argument and you are holding it to a much higher standard than your own comment.

Your first paragraph is an ad hominem attack that is subsequently withdrawn adding nothing to the conversation.

I think you might have misread my questions for arguments. Questions have a symbol at the end: '?'. Also, sentences starting "I thought" are not formal arguments, but a highlight of the contrast between my past understanding and the article.

Also, in order for me to make such a contrast, wouldn't I have to read the article?

And just in case the attack at the beginning was serious, I would like to point out that the questions at the beginning of my post proposed two mechanisms whereby HFCS would be worse for you than sugar, which is what this study's results imply. That's hardly something a 'paid shill' would do.

The only argument I made, if I made one at all, is that just because HFCS is worse than sugar (as proposed by the article) doesn't mean that other sweeteners are good for you. This is likely an important thing to remember for all of those that will use this data when making decisions in their own lives.

<comment><USER10> I appreciate your asking the questions that a lot of people have when they hear that HFCS is "evil".

Generally, if people have been taught that there is more than one kind of sugar (yeah, I know), they learn about sucrose, glucose, and fructose, at most.

The name 'fructose' doesn't help clarify this situation. We are told that we (rightly) should eat more fruits and vegetables. But those juicy peaches and other fruits and fruitish foods (berries, etc.) are sweet.

As a result, we make a very direct connection between fructose and fruit, which is enough to create confusion about the HFCS messaging.[1] Points as well for knowing that honey contains a boatload of fructose. Honey's also good for us, or else they wouldn't point out that things are sweetened with honey instead of 'refined' sugar, right?

As with many issues, there's a bathtub curve of understanding. The completely ignorant and the very-slightly informed people are not confused. Nor are people with a high level of understanding about the combination of chemistry and human physiology.

It's that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" zone that has trouble. You have a better than average understanding of the chemistry and the biological processes, but are having trouble putting together the whole picture. How the heck are you going to advise your kids on what to eat without laying down fiat rules?

I think you were treated unfairly in the reply to your post but it does contain some useful information. For the last laugh[2], I would suggest that after you get the understanding you need on the issue, you write a post/page/paper on the topic, targeting your current self as an audience.

Post it here knowing that HN is a culmination of people who are in the bottom of that bathtub on just about every issue, with some awesome representation of the "heavily informed". You'll help a lot of people and get some actionable feedback.

Just filter out the emotion[3] and revise as needed and you'll have a citation handy the next time this sort of thing comes up. Then you'll be that guy on the right hand side of the curve and can have the last laugh by encouraging education instead of discouraging the exposure of innocent ignorance.

[1] The Corn Growers' Association has created some biased but unintentionally hilarious examples of pro-HFCS messaging.

[http://sweetsurprise.com](http://sweetsurprise.com) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ- ByUx552s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ-ByUx552s)

[2] and because I am lazy and want people to do things for me

[3] OMFG, he didn't talk about sucralose, galactose, maltose, and zymurlose!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there actually a published, peer-reviewed study available from this? This just seems like an in-progress summary. Additionally, as another poster commented, this is still correlative, not causative.

HFCS might be indirectly responsible for weight problems, but that's only because of its prominence, low price, and calorie dense-ness. Not some voodoo reason as this article states and as many believe.

Try this: [http://examine.com/faq/is-hfcs-high-fructose-corn-syrup- wors...](http://examine.com/faq/is-hfcs-high-fructose-corn-syrup-worse-than- sugar.html)

The experiment's conclusions don't make sense either. There are dozens and dozens of studies showing ONLY net calorie intake is what is responsible for weight gain or weight loss, not the contents of what they eat: [http://examine.com/faq/what-should-i-eat-for-weight- loss.htm...](http://examine.com/faq/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss.html)

So for the study to refute the conclusions we have arrived at today would be quite the breakthrough. Not to mention the whole part where it violates the laws of thermodynamics.

Can anyone link to a study (not an article) showing HFCS causing more weight gain in a calorie-controlled study that accounts for water weight and (preferably) doesn't have the people count their own calories?

<comment><USER12> Your rapport with the great Goog is weak. The study:

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091305710...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091305710000614)

Reply by the Corn Refiners Association:

[http://www.corn.org/princeton-hfcs-study- errors.html](http://www.corn.org/princeton-hfcs-study-errors.html)

Thermodynamics question: They were holding energy inputs constant in the system. Stored energy was not constant. What third variable could have been responsible for the difference? Rhymes with input.

<comment><USER11> Your second link is broken.

The study's conclusions are misleading. The total intake from food and the sweetened water were not matched for calories. The only thing matched for calories was the amount of sweetened water; rats were allowed to eat as much food as they want. They then drew all of these conclusions that aren't directly related to HFCS, but related to the fact that the rats were overeating.

It's still an interesting conclusion, but really the only thing they concluded was that rats consuming HFCS ate more food than rats consuming sugar. All of the other negative effects cannot be pinned on HFCS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Where's the rampant fact-checking and criticism of major dietary studies I usually see on HN? Could this have anything to do with bias against high- fructose corn syrup, which is chemically almost identical to honey?

The LA Times reported on the study in depth, and there are some serious deficiencies.

> "After eight weeks, three groups of rats weighed essentially the same – the > chow-only rats (462 grams on average), the 24-hour HFCS rats (470 grams) and > the sugar-water rats (477 grams). But the rats that were able to drink the > HFCS solution for 12 hours each day weighed in at an average of 502 grams, a > difference that was deemed statistically significant."

> "Complicating things further, the researchers cite a related study of female > rats that found no difference in weight gain between animals that consumed > HFCS or sugar over an eight-week period."

>"the researchers found that rats allowed to drink the HFCS solution gained more weight over six months than rats with no access to a sweetened beverage. The difference was dramatic: rats with 24-hour access to HFCS gained 27% more weight than the rats stuck with chow only. But the researchers didn't include a third group of rats with access to sugar, so it's impossible to say whether HFCS was worse than regular sugar."*

>"The researchers remedied this problem in a third experiment involving female rats. Over a seven-month period, rats that were able to drink sugar water for 12 hours a day gained 183% of their body weight – the exact same amountas rats who could drink HFCS solution for 12 hours a day. However, female rats with 24-hour access to HFCS boosted their body weight by 200%. It's not clear why high-fructose corn syrup was more fattening over an eight-week period when it was available for 12 hours of the day (but not 24), yet the opposite was true when the experiment lasted for seven months."

This is what happens when reporters don't understand what they're writing about.

*"(Why didn't they test the long-term effects of sugar? The researchers said it wasn't necessary because sugar consumption didn't affect body weight in their first experiment. True, but neither did HFCS when made available for 24 hours a day, and they did test that.)"

[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/03/high-f...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/03/high- fructose-corn-syrup-hfcs-sugar-princeton-study.html)

<comment><USER7> People just like to have a scapegoat for their health problems: MSG, gluten, GMO, etc. Better to blame the big bad corporation for making you fat than the fact that you like to eat lots of sugary shit and don't do any exercise.

<comment><USER7> Downvote LOL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would just like to point out that the photo in the article is the most staged "watch science happen!" photo I've seen in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER15> "The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose. The critical differences in appetite, metabolism and gene expression that underlie this phenomenon are yet to be discovered"

The whole thing is one big correlation confirmation. I was hoping to find something substantial that would explain the underlying cause.

<comment><USER16> I'm no expert on this, but it seems like they were studying the problem in the wrong way.

Instead of considering HFCS as a food, and measuring how it works on your body, why not consider HFCS as a drug, and measure how it works on your brain? I think the HFCS->obesity issue has a lot more to do with the way sugar affects our brains.

I think HFCS is detrimental to human survival because it has encouraged us to get all of our happiness from food, leading to overeating and eating to "feel better" (it never happens) in some portions of the population. Thus, we are at this obesity issue, which is really a happiness issue. From my own personal experience: When you believe in yourself and you _want_ to change, obesity becomes less and less of a problem because you are motivated to work out, eat better and generally take care of yourself. But the fact remains that you once ingested a drug to feel happy which also made you fat. Now you are eating food the way you're supposed to and not really getting that happiness that was once supplied by the sugary foods you were eating. You must use other drugs, like meditation or even alcohol/marijuana, to supplant this "completeness" feeling that you are missing from the lack of sugary foods.

Eventually, your body will give up the tolerance to sugary foods and you'll find yourself drinking sodas and eating dessert much less than you used to. Now, the general level of HFCS in all of our foods is no longer affecting your body weight and the way you feel about yourself.

I don't want to sound like a commercial here, but in the last 2-3 years I've been very much aware of my sugar-rich diet and began to slowly wean myself off of the addiction, and I can happily say that I've gone from a size 40 to a size 36 waist and lost over 20 pounds in the last year alone by simply being aware of how sugar affects your mind AND body, getting more exercise, and eating smaller portions of healthier food.

<comment><USER17> " _Instead of considering HFCS as a food, and measuring how it works on your body, why not consider HFCS as a drug, and measure how it works on your brain?_ "

That does seem to be the major focus of this lab: Bart Hoebel is a psychology professor "who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction".

<comment><USER16> You're right, this was just research and wasn't attempting to explain the "why", just the "what happens".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Actually, all this proves is that some people on HN are idiots who can't be bothered to read the actual study. Remove the last two words of your title and your post would be technically correct (i.e the same title as the news article).

Male rats fed HFCS did have more weight gain than rats fed only chow. However there was no difference between rats fed HFCS and rats fed sucrose over the long-term. Please actually read the study and look at Table 1.

</comment><comment><USER18> > A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners > are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high- > fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access > to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

I have my suspicions about HFCS, but what's not clear from the way this was written, and I suspect is the kicker here, is the _access to_ line. Is it the same calorically balanced diet PLUS sucrose water or HFCS water, or is it the same calorically balanced diet INCLUDING sucrose water or HFCS water. The difference between the two of those is massive, and I would bet it's the former not the latter.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow, this blows my mind just a little bit. Especially since I've been wrong about this for so long even though this study has been out for years. I always thought that table sugar and HFCS were the same. 50/50 glucose to fructose (about). But then there's this:

"...as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized."

So with HFCS you're just free-basing fructose? Amazing. Maybe I have to stop making fun of this trend toward "NO HFCS! PURE CAN SUGAR!" that I've been writing off as nonsense until now...

<comment><USER20> Encourage your supermarket to carry Pepsi Throwback alongside their real Pepsi.

<comment><USER21> Or you could just drink water which is way healthier.

<comment><USER20> You could, except that water doesn't provide caffeine and real sugar, so presumably one is having a cola for its energy boost rather than its health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't believe the smartest people on the planet here are arguing about this.

HFCS is cheaper than sugar because of the tariffs, but it is an equivalent substitute. No better, no worse.

Americans are getting fatter these days because the food industry (McDonald's as well as prepackaged foods) can make desirable, filling foods for a dollar or two.

If they needed to use sugar instead of HFCS, it would be about 10 cents more per dollar - big deal.

People _like_ corn dogs and cake - it tastes good. So businesses have mass produced it enough to make it affordable to everyone.

The potatoes and beans of yesterday are cheap as well, but nobody wants them. _That 's_ why people are gaining weight.

Absolutely nothing to do with HFCS vs sugar - the food designers can use either one with the same effect.

<comment><USER23> It is carbohydrates and "low fat" diets making people obese. The only think unhealthy in a bacon cheeseburger is the bun.

Until we can kill this "low fat" nonsense, people will continue to get fatter.

<comment><USER24> The low-fat/high-fat argument is entirely dominated by pseudo-science.

Eat less. Be more active. Period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I try to beat on this drum whenever I see people jump to conclusions, in studies, on the media, or on Hacker News, based off one study. The possibility for one study to be screwed up is so enormously high nobody should ever take one at face value.

To date, most studies that review the concept of "some foods make you fatter than others" vs "calories in vs calories out" consistently weigh in favor of "calories in vs calories out".

I always find www.sciencebasedmedicine.org to be a great resource for this. Also, the podcast Skeptics Guide to the Universe is really fun, and they talk about things like this all the time.

</comment><comment><USER26> I haven't looked yet but I would like to see experiments that look at how varying amounts of HFCS cause extra weight. It could be that even a small amount (over time or not) damages something and then causes weight gain or it could just be that they have more accessible calories.

I'd also like to see an experiment about the reversibility of the weight loss. If you get them fat on HFCS and then switch to regular sucrose do they end up looking like the rats that had sucrose the whole time.

</comment><comment><USER27> We did a little human testing on our fraternal twin infants. The slightly smaller of the two was fed formula which had HFCS as an ingredient, the other was fed formula not containing HFCS as the sweetener. Our smaller son quickly gained more weight and started to outweigh his brother by a pound. The (initially) smaller twin still outweighs his brother. They are now ~21 lbs and 19 lbs respectively @11mo

<comment><USER28> Anecdote. There could have been other differences between the formulas, the children could have varied in weight naturally, or there could be other factors you didn't control for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> High-fructose corn syrup and ethanol, with increasing push back against farm subsidies due to tax payers and trade agreements, these are the loopholes used.

I was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, the single biggest change I have made is avoiding products with hfcs, going very well and lost 30 pounds.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have always hated the campaign by CRA for HFCS like this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ- ByUx552s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ-ByUx552s)

</comment><comment><USER31> Not to mention it's GMO corn being used! You might as well poke holes in the lining of your stomach.

<comment><USER10> If we take selective breeding, inbreeding, and hybridization into account, corn (maize) is one of the most genetically manipulated foods on the planet.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25creature.html?_r...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25creature.html?_r=0)</comment></comment>


NetBSD fully reproducible builds - <AUTHOR> https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_fully_reproducible_builds <comment><USER2> Woah. This is something that would cause me to switch over from Linux.

Reproducible builds are so important, they prevent a build server or developer laptop from being a single point of failure as a tainted build can now be detected by others.

<comment><USER3> Debian developers have been working on Reproducible Builds for a number of years[0]. Currently the Debian amd64 distribution is ~93.7% reproducible[1]. It's possible that Debian amd64 systems will be fully reproducible in Stretch+1 (~2-3 years).

[0] [https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds](https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds)

[1] [https://tests.reproducible- builds.org/debian/reproducible.ht...](https://tests.reproducible- builds.org/debian/reproducible.html)

<comment><USER4> The Debian wiki page appears to be about reproducible builds for _packages_.

The NetBSD wiki entry is about progress on reproducible builds for _tools, kernel and userland_.

As for packages, reproducible builds under pkgsrc is still a WIP.

My use of third party binary packages and pkgsrc is minimal but I am continually building custom kernels and crunched binaries with build.sh and I do make use of the binary userlands from releng.

For me at least, having reproducible builds for these alone is quite useful.

<comment><USER5> On debian tools, kernel and userland are packages.

<comment><USER4> I should have guessed. I use their libc6 package for q)k) under /emul/linux and in the past the live.debian.org images occasionally but that is about as much as I know about Debian. Apologies for my ignorance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At Cygnus we had a customer from the telecom industry. They had SLAs with their own customers that included terms like "no more than 10 minutes of downtime per decade". They paid a LOT of money to have one, consistent release (no upgrades, only bug fixes); when they reported a big and got a fix they would diff the new binary and required that every change could be traced solely to the patch issued a nothing else.

Satisfying this made GCC a lot better.

</comment><comment><USER7> That is wonderful.

I always dread dealing with build systems, mostly in the C land.

Deterministic behaviour, especially in this rigorous fashion, is probably very helpful for much more cases than just trust.

This looming assumption that make executes pure functions to produce output could actually become true. Now it really suffices if make triggers a target if one of the inputs changed.

<comment><USER8> > Now it really suffices if make triggers a target if one of the inputs > changed.

This is exactly how Nix and Guix works. If any inputs change, it will force a rebuild of all dependent packages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> FTR, Debian is like 80% reproducible [https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds](https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds)

"Reproducible builds of Debian as a whole are still not a reality, though individual reproducible builds of packages are possible. So while we are making very good progress, it is a stretch to say that Debian is reproducible."

In my experience, if you have a single home made package in C it is pretty easy to make it reproducible

<comment><USER10> It's funny that to prove your argument you're quoting a paragraph that says exactly otherwise. Not to mention, NetBSD builds are about the OS, that's kernel, tooling, base and so on, and not about packages, as in Debian's case.

<comment><USER11> As another comment notes, Debian packages the kernel, tooling, base, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If author is here, there's a typo in the text. It says "iso6990" but should say "ISO 9660".

<comment><USER13> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you care about getting on the Web safely, Webconverger has reproducible builds at [https://build.webconverger.com/](https://build.webconverger.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Forgive my Ignorance,

OpenBSD - Absolute Security FreeBSD - General purpose

What is NetBSD aiming at?

<comment><USER16> Maximum portability... "Of course it runs NetBSD"

From their website: _NetBSD is a free, fast, secure, and highly portable Unix- like Open Source operating system. It is available for a wide range of platforms, from large-scale servers and powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices. Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent for use in both production and research environments, and the source code is freely available under a business-friendly license._

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know, it's unrelated, but its 2017 and

> Unfortunately this was not easy to find on NetBSD, because we are still > using CVS as the source control system

seems just weird.

</comment><comment><USER18> Of all the great OSes, NetBSD seems to get the least fanfare but it's always been my favorite. It's fast, secure, and due to a well reasoned architecture it works on everything. pkgsrc is amazing. They also have a very helpful, friendly community. It especially warms my heart to run `ps -ax` on a new install and see all of about 10 processes. The OS feels lean, neat, and organized, and I feel like I know exactly what is going on, where to find a given file, etc.

These special strengths -- vast hardware compatibility, rump kernels, now full reproducible builds, are all enabled by a greater underlying (and seemingly underrated) technical excellence.

<comment><USER19> Also run "top" on the fresh install to see it uses about 10MB :D . I learned how to use Unix when I installed and used NetBSD for some years, so for me it is "Mother-UNIX". It's a pity that general hardware support is not that great anymore nowadays. But it runs quite well on the Lenovo X240/T440 range of laptops which can still be had new in some places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone has a list of what are the typical sources of non-determinism (other than compiler and automake versions)?

<comment><USER21> There's a fairly comprehensive list at [https://reproducible- builds.org/docs/](https://reproducible-builds.org/docs/). Debian has a detailed list of reproducibility issues and affected packages at [https://tests.reproducible- builds.org/debian/index_issues.ht...](https://tests.reproducible- builds.org/debian/index_issues.html)

<comment><USER8> Here's a smørbrødliste:

* Non-isolated build environment. This is just asking for all sorts of trouble (users, hostname, network access, etc).

* File system time stamps.

* Recording times in the build process (although even gcc supports SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH since version 7).

* Usage of CPU-specific instructions, e.g. -march=native to GCC.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple asks developers to place its login button above Google, Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-apps/apple-asks-developers-to-place-its-login-button-above-google-facebook-idUSKCN1T6056 <comment><USER2> The generation of random email addresses for the accounts are a really neat and interesting feature I'm glad some privacy centered companies are trying out.

I've seen comments here on HN from people that has implemented systems like this on their own and it seems to have been quite successful, making it possible not only to hold better keep privacy but also to identify what company leaked/sold your data. I don't have the time to do this myself but would be interested if some company made this an easy to use feature. It is time identity and got a bit separated from things like email on the Internet. Most companies has been shown to not hold on to our information with the respect it deserves.

All in all I like that such a large company as Apple is taking the privacy thing and running with it. Even though I am not a costumer of theirs I have to say things around the security topic has always been their strong suit. Together with Firefox privacy maybe has a chance to become a bigger topic in the mainstream.

<comment><USER3> > [...] interesting feature I'm glad some privacy centered companies are > trying out

Craigslist implemented anonymized email as a core feature and found success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a bit of a non story - of course Apple wants you to put their button first, but they haven't made this a requirement.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you don't ask you don't get

</comment><comment><USER6> That leads me to wonder what kinds of "dark patterns" will occur.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am glad they do.</comment>


On Bushido, launch apps from github repos - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/the+best+thing+since+sliced+bread

<comment><USER2> EDIT: And we're back! The hn-facing server should be able to stand up to a bit more of a beating now, and I've increased the background workers (cheating a bit, since normal bushido apps can't do that yet), so we should be able to tear through the queue much more quickly.

Edit: I've put in a different public server (outside of the normal rotation) for everyone to hit. It's a single box instead of the elastic cloud - so it'll be a bit slower launching for everyone trying it out, but it'll keep the normal sites we run going snappy.

Wow, big thanks to Jacques for such a kind article. He, and several other on hn, have been wonderfully helpful all along the development of Bushido.

If there are any questions feel free to post them here, and I'll do my best to keep up with answering them!

Feel free to shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com with any questions or you're looking to get into the beta - be sure to mention hn :)

Oh, and here's a totally gratuitous video for everyone wondering wtf this is, and wondering to themselves, "how can I deploy ~20 apps in 2 minutes?": <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/412963/bushido/bushido_hill.mov>

I'll start collecting some of the questions here:

Q: It's stuck at 8%! A: Yup. Bushido is self-hosting, because we want to have the same experience as our users. We give everyone 1 background worker for free - and we haven't needed to have more, up until now. We'll add this in later, but for now, just let it hang out for awhile, until the DelayedJob worker goes through the queue and gets to you :)

Q: What happens to my data? A: All the DB data is kept, and backed up (currently it's daily, will go down to hourly), and can be exported any time. Data written to the file system isn't guaranteed to be there, unless it's written to RAILS_ROOT/permanent (or the rails 3 equivalent). If it is written there, it will be backed up on the same schedule as the DB data.

Q: Where is the application running? A: The applications all run on our servers (the ones currently taking a bit of a beating). No need for you to do anything on your side.

Q: What is the end goal of the project? A: Ah, well now, that'd be a bit boring if we just spilled it out right now :) Suffice to say, one- click/automated deployment is just the tip of where we're headed right now. Check out the developer beta if you want to find out more!

<comment><USER3> Is it just Ruby or can PHP and Python play aswell? Any library/network restrictions? Any tips for making apps deployable?

<comment><USER2> Just Ruby (rack) and static (CSS/HTML5/JS) apps right now. Our backend is built in a way we think should scale to other languages nicely (although we have to impose some structure), but we're focusing on getting the system and experience right for one group of people first, and once users are sufficiently happy from there, we'll build out in different directions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As one of the maintainers of a small open source project (<http://getontracks.org/>), I see a huge opportunity with Bushido. The project has really struggled with making it easy for new users to start up, but even a tutorial doesn't help non-technical users. A few people have set up hosted versions of Tracks, but getting them to stay up-to-date with progress on trunk is a challenge.

With Bushido, projects like Tracks finally have a clear route into the hands of non-technical users. Sure, I can go set up a hosted version of Tracks, but then I'm taking responsibility that, as a part-time maintainer, I have no interest in. This rocks!

</comment><comment><USER5> I think I was among the first to test <http://bushi.do> out with <http://github.com/SingAlong/billmebob> It's a really cool idea for a platform.

This is even better than Heroku. This, if done right, will probably change the way SaaS apps are done. It's the way the web's app store should work. Let people develop apps and let customers host the app, while these two parties never have to care about the hosting for the app (Bushi.do takes care of it. No meddling with config. All done by Bushi.do).

<comment><USER6> I don't know about others, but I don't think I'd be comfortable outsourcing my infrastructure to someone else to quite this degree. It's sort of like running a restaurant, but instead of having a kitchen, you go to your customers' houses and cook for them.

That being said, this is awesome technology, and it's fantastic for open source projects. I just don't think it will revolutionize delivery of commercial SaaS apps.

<comment><USER5> _It's sort of like running a restaurant, but instead of having a kitchen, you go to your customers' houses and cook for them._

I would say it's like being an expert chef and passing on your recipe to a cook who can make the meal in his kitchen and deliver it to the customer. In this case. You, the developer, are the expert chef, Bushi.do is the cook who does the work for the customers.

IMO, this turns the web like the mobile's app store/market. There's no investment for the developer apart from developing the app (for most apps). He can just put up the git url on Bushi.do. Any customer who's interested in the app can install it on Bushi.do and pay for the resources while you, the chef, gets a cut of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's stuck at 8% (Inspecting url...).

There is no information about the project, what it needs in order to work, what kinds of applications it can run, etc.

I'd be very interested in all of that, I assume hitting the frontpage wasn't too healthy and might have overloaded something, so I'll try again in a few days.

<comment><USER2> Hey there,

Yes, I put in some rate limiting for the launchers, and it appears to have gotten backed up a bit. I'll see what I can do, but we're in a private beta right now, so I'm more inclined to work on the stuff our regular users are bringing up and worry about hn-scale later :)

That said, shoot me an email, firstname.lastname@example.com, and I'll get you into the beta if you'd like, with access to the docs. Though honestly, so far the main support method has been through chat/im/email/skype with me or my cofounder, and we generally take notes from those conversations and turn that into docs.

<comment><AUTHOR> if so, maybe you can cache the 'top apps', thus people can see what is it about ?

<comment><USER8> Hi I'm working with sgrove on the project. We had considered an app cacheing or reuse approach for dealing with this influx of traffic, however we wanted every one to have a fresh install experience.

We very well could have directed you to an existing unclaimed install of a popular app and saved the resources of spinning up another. We felt that this could be messy as you might end up on an app that somebody had polluted with test/demo data and settings.

We cache dependencies for popular apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> i understand your goal. but realize that current experience is "frozen at 8%"... not a super first impression either.

just suggesting to improve the hn post consequences

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can we change the title of the post to something that describes the matter better? "On Bushido, launch apps from github repo's" or something like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the suggestion. done

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A comment/question coming from someone who is obviously a designer... It seems like Bushido is operating in a similar space as Heroku, and both have the same purple/dark color scheme and Japanese/Asian theme... Was this intentional, and if so, what are some merits and drawbacks to branding your product similarly to that of a competitor?

Of course this is an early beta and branding is of little importance for this kind of product, but as a designer, it's the first thing that came to mind.

</comment><comment><USER11> It may be great. But the title should be 'RoR' apps and mentioned earlier in the article. It sounds much more revolutionary until you learn that fact.

All apps are not Ruby or Ruby on Rails!

<comment><USER2> No, not all; just the good ones :)

<comment><USER11> And I still think its awesome. I'm trying to try it out right now but seems overloaded. But as an Erlang web developer I feel left out when tools claims to do things like 'deploy almost all apps from github!' :)

<comment><USER2> You're right, we'll have to work on communication for the public-facing side over the next few days! Thanks for the feedback.

And, I loves me some Erlang, I understand :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I didn't expect the word to get out so fast! I've known about Bushi.do for a couple weeks now, and it's really as revolutionary as Jacques says.

And I'm really honored that Sean chose to feature a project I'm working on, LocomotiveCMS, as a way to show Bushi.do's capabilities.

<comment><USER2> Sacha's an awesome person to work with, for anyone looking for a designer who understands MVP and UX. I've seen him and Didier work magic with LocomotiveCMS!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ive been following bushido for a while and think it has awesome potential, being able to sell hosted web apps without having to go through the process of building a service infrastructure could bring the benefits of iphone type apps to a much larger audience

</comment><comment><USER14> I love this idea. Does it only support Rails apps, or does it also support LAMP as well?

I tested it with <https://github.com/ginatrapani/thinkup> because I'd be very impressed if it could set ThinkUp up with no user interaction, but like many others I'm stuck at 8%.

I'm sure you're getting a lot of traffic from HN now, so I'll wait patiently :).

<comment><USER2> Just Ruby/Rails/Sinatra for the near future. As much as we'd like to go after that, it's not likely something we'll be able to handle.

ThinkUp looks pretty damn interesting though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the same vein as this, I did a weekend project to write a mac app / chrome extension combo which adds a "Clone Now" button to every github page. It works pretty okay and is available here: <https://github.com/patr1ck/Mitosis>

<comment><USER2> Very cool - have you emailed the github guys about this? Tom's insanely focused on the users, and anything that makes github a nicer experience for them. They might blog about it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How is it fundamentally different than heroku? (Not trying to troll, genuinely curious.)

<comment><USER2> For what we're showing today, the main difference is: No account required to launch an app.

We'll be showing more and more over the coming week or two as we start to share developer stories, but I'll give one hint here... <http://locomotive- engine.heroku.com/>

If you're looking for answers right away or want to try the beta, shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know links on jacquesmattheij.com get more upvotes, but can't you just submit <http://bushi.do/>

<comment><USER18> Given the amount of information on the bushi.do homepage vs. the description in Jacques' article, I'd wager that would be inappropriate in this case.

<comment><USER17> That's fair, but I felt that bushi.do would have been equally understood with an appropriate title or comment explaining the website. In fact, if the same article had been written on a different blog, I doubt an indirect link would have been submitted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> perhaps greasemonkey is a good way to get it on the repo page itself

<comment><USER2> Actually, barring the github guys rushing to integrate with us, we made a bookmarklet I'll post here in a bit.

Great suggestion by the way.

<comment><USER20> I'd prefer an extension that can be synced between devices and formats/reinstalls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice. Orchestra does something similar for PHP apps.

<http://orchestra.io/>

</comment><comment><USER22> its confusing since a lot of github repositories are not ruby, they are not even running on web servers. a bit more info on bushi.do describing what it does would be helpful

<comment><USER2> You're absolutely right - we also need to explain why apps stick around for 24 hours, how to keep them permanently, etc.

Once the ruckus dies down here later today, we'll circle around to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> sgrove,etc and github..

Very nice..I like it

</comment><comment><USER24> Sliced bread is disgusting. I wonder how good this thing is then.</comment>