The 10 Biggest Surprises about Amazon's New Kindles - <AUTHOR> http://www.beyond-black-friday.com/2011/10/02/the-10-biggest-surprises-about-amazons-new-kindles/ <comment><USER2> This article seems unnecessarily negative. The kindle is a book reader and a book reader only, and at that it works very very well.

Point by point:

> 1\. There's No 3G Web Browsing (except on Kindle Fire)+

It's a book reader.

> 2\. Power Adapters Not Included

It comes with a usb cable. I think everyone can charge a usb device nowadays. If you can't, then the official power adaptor is ten bucks.

> 3\. One Miserable Keyboard

It's a book reader.

Still, if you really want a keyboard, they sell that too.

> 4\. Your Personal Documents are now Stored at Amazon.com

They always went through Amazon's servers anyway. You can delete them.

> 5\. Amazon Prime not Included

Why _would_ this be included?

<comment><USER3> I disagree. His 5 positive points sounded pretty gushing and made it obvious to me that he's definitely a fan.

The negative points may seem surprising at first glance, but I think all 5 points are informative.

> > 1\. There's No 3G Web Browsing (except on Kindle Fire)+

> It's a book reader.

Previous kindles included it, so even I expected it.

> > 2\. Power Adapters Not Included

> It comes with a usb cable. I think everyone can charge a usb device > nowadays. If you can't, then the official power adaptor is ten bucks.

Virtually every other piece of consumer electronics comes with a power adapter. This is surprising.

> > 3\. One Miserable Keyboard

> It's a book reader. Still, if you really want a keyboard, they sell that > too.

The point isn't that the keyboard is bad, the point is that the keyboard is excruciatingly bad.

> > 4\. Your Personal Documents are now Stored at Amazon.com

> They always went through Amazon's servers anyway. You can delete them.

Still a good point to mention to NEW kindle buyers, though.

> > 5\. Amazon Prime not Included

> Why would this be included?

Because most of the rumours before the announcement said that it would be.

<comment><USER4> > The point isn't that the keyboard is bad, the point is that the keyboard is > excruciatingly bad.

You're talking about a device with a D-pad, and no touch screen. That's how keyboards work on such devices. It being bad isn't unexpected or noteworthy.

<comment><USER5> EDIT: got confused between "Kindle" and "Kindle Touch". To me it is obvious that "Kindle" has no touch screen and that keyboard input must be via the D-pad. Consequently I assumed the complaint re:keyboard not being touch would apply to a product that actually had a touchscreen.

In short: I agree with my parent comment. neither unexpected or noteworthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Apple's iPad only recently got its own version of Flash," This is news to me, did I miss an announcement somewhere? I thought the iPad was still as Flash- less as ever.

<comment><USER7> Yes the iPad is still without a flash viewer.

The recently released Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5 will stream to iOS devices by delivering an HTML5 rendering from my understanding of their press release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> EDIT: Mea Culpa. The article was complaining that the "Kindle" (non-touch) didn't have a touchscreen and had the tedious d-pad interface instead. That revelation doesn't bother me at all (and hardly is a revelation.

Original post follows:

It is called the "Kindle _Touch_ ".

It is advertised thus: "now with _multi-touch_ ".

Their longer blurb says this: "Simple To Use _Touchscreen_ Kindle Touch features an easy-to-use touch interface. Turn pages, search, shop books and take notes quickly and easily."

To learn now that the "touch" screen borders on being useless and that amazon has a very poor concept of "quick and easy" leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

<comment><USER8> The article was talking about the $79 Kindle not the Kindle Touch for the keyboard point. Not sure why they'd expect the non-touch kindle to have a touch keyboard..

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article says, "There's No 3G Web Browsing (except on Kindle Fire)" - I was under the impression that the Kindle Fire didn't have 3G connectivity. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, this article is pretty poorly researched. Considering how much press the Kindles got it's kind of inexcusable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I bought the $79 model hoping that the %30 weight decrease (compared to 3rd gen Kindle) would make it easier to handle with one hand. This seems like an obvious use case to me that would make it more comfortable to say, read in bed or read with a cup of coffee. So I'm disappointed that the button placement still makes page turning a two-handed affair. The page turn buttons are so tiny that one handed reading requires an awkward position.

I'm pretty jealous of the new Nook, which looks easy to handle with one hand. Amazon does a lot of things really well, but they still seem to be figuring out hardware.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, the lack of 3g support completely kills the interest in the device for me. I always assumed that it was unsustainable, but I at least expected a mention of the removal of the feature outside of a support forum.

<comment><USER13> Just so you read it right they say specifically - no 3G support for the standard Kindle _Web Browser_. I've had my kindle for a year now and have never used the (experimental) web browser.

<comment><USER12> I, on the other hand, use it some what regularly, which is why I am not happy about this change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After thinking about this some more I think there is a massive communication failure here. Lots of unreasonable expectations and plenty of misinformation and not only in this article but by other poster (including myself). I'll try to clear things up:

1\. "Kindle Touch" has a touch screen "Kindle" does not.

2\. "Kindle Fire" never had 3G.

3\. Newer Kindle 3Gs will not support free 3G web browsing (except for Wikipedia)

</comment><comment><USER14> If Amazon is actually selling the Fire for a loss, how is that a "surprise"? Amazon isn't a hardware company. Its hardware is all about building a delivery infrastructure for its content sales: books, movies, TV, music, etc. (This is sort of like Apple in reverse; Apple uses content to sell hardware).

Obviously Amazon expects to monetize the heck out of each Kindle customer, over a lengthy user lifetime, on content sales _to_ the Kindle. So building a Kindle userbase through cheap, subsidized Kindles is a no brainer.

The Fire isn't competing with the iPad; it's competing with Netflix. To that end, I am a bit surprised to see a Netflix app on the Fire. At the same time, Amazon probably realized that millions of Netflix customers would need the Netflix app in order to justify using the Fire as a media tablet. Once they've got the customers using Netflix on the Fire, they'll try to find a way to make their media downloads more attractive and less cumbersome than the Netflix app.

</comment><comment><USER15> Having been long curious about the "free Kindle" prediction (we still haven't reached November '11 yet!), I smiled at this point:

"4. One Special Offer Can Pay for the Cost of a Kindle. Amazon knows customers don't necessarily want ads on their Kindle but they've worked hard to line up some very attractive offers. '[S]pending $114 on the Kindle saved me 20 percent on buying a new Apple MacBook Air', reported one finance columnist, 'a savings of $200." He notes there's been other discounts which exceed the original price of a Kindle with Special Offers, including a 20% discount on new LCD television screens.'"

Anyone got more info on that MBA discount? Might just have to get me a Kindle, being in the market for an Air...

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm the happy owner of a Nook Color, and it comes with Flash in its web browser. Guess what, I'd rather do without it: it makes the very snappy browser crawls, and it's used almost only to display ads. OK, it can render low-res videos but that's about it. Hardly a selling point to me -- actually Apple was right on this, Flash is a pain for mobile browsing, the quicker it dies the better.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised that the 'special offers' are so good. I had never considered buying the ad-supported version, but the offers referenced seem pretty good.

As an aside, the light-grey text on white background made that article very difficult to read.

<comment><USER18> I'm often envious of the Kindle Special Offers I see pop up on deal sites every so often... things like $20 Amazon gift card for $10 that I would definitely take advantage of.

<comment><USER19> A friend of mine has a Kindle w/Special Offers. He actually bought two, having lost one on an airplane. Apparently the special offers were good enough that he easily paid for both.

At this point, I'm wishing I could _opt in_ my Kindle 3.

<comment><USER20> A sale doesn't save you money if you weren't planning on buying it in the first place.

<comment><USER18> This is true, but since Amazon sells a larger variety of products than any retail store in the world, you can easily buy from them things you already would have. I have a free Amazon Prime account and regularly get Amazon gift cards from reward programs and other things, so buy everything I can at Amazon, from toilet paper to cereal to tools...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I stopped reading at: There's No 3G Web Browsing (except on Kindle Fire)

Kindle Fire doesn't even have 3G. They probably should've spent more time researching first.

<comment><USER22> Seriously! I kept reading, but when the first line gets it SO wrong (and then doesn't even mention the Fire in the text under that heading) you can be skeptical from then on.</comment></comment>


Python.org is down - <AUTHOR> http://python.org/

<comment><USER2> jquery was having problems caused by (apparently) getting hammered by Bing last week.. <http://twitter.com/jeresig/status/2935982153>

I do notice that use python.org/docs an awful lot though. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe it's like Apple and there's new stuff coming out.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you been on a meditation retreat? How has it changed your life? - <AUTHOR> Hey all - I went on a meditation retreat for the first time in 2016 and have been to several since.
Since then, I've met a lot of friends through the process, but was curious what the overlap between the general tech community and the meditation community was.
Have you been on a retreat? If so how was it and would you go again. If not and you are interested in one - what has prevented you thus far? <comment><USER2> Yes. I have been lucky enough to attend two Theravada retreats in Thailand. However, the practice of daily meditation and adherence to the 5 precepts (not taking life, not stealing, not engaging in false speech, not engaging in sexual misconduct, not taking intoxicants) plus practicing loving-kindness to all beings is far more life-changing than attending a retreat every once in a while.

Daily meditation especially vipassana and loving-kindness can truly change your life, bring inner peace and can truly in your personal and business relations.

As an entrepreneur, one side-effect of meditation is that it made me really examine what my definition of "success" and "happiness" is. In so doing meditation has taken away much of my ego and the desire to achieve revenue growth or market share goals. I simply don't care about that anymore and now I just want to operate a business that makes great products that people love while that producing enough revenue to support my team. For myself, building and maintaining an awesome and supportive work environment where individuals and life-work balance are valued are my top priorities. Happy lives and families are key. The gain of status and material objects are just transitory with no significance.

<comment><USER3> Any recommendations on books on Vipassana?

<comment><USER4> [https://vipassana-for-hackers.org/](https://vipassana-for-hackers.org/)

<comment><USER3> Not sure if I am doing anything wrong, but I am unable to download the PDFs both from the website and github :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went to two meditation retreats with the Art of Living Foundation.

The 101 retreat was held on campus at Google, and I had a blast.

The 201 retreat was held at a retreat center north of SF. Not as fun, super challenging, but still a rewarding experience.

Net-net: while I'm glad I did it, I don't need to signup for more meditation retreats. One reason is because I got what I needed out of it (i.e. I know how to meditate on my own). The other reason is I discovered that meditation is effective in soothing anxiety about the _future_. It's more important, in my case, to make sense of the _past_ (aka stop ruminations). Therapy and journaling have been significantly more effective, than meditation, in addressing those needs.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Have you been on a retreat? If so how was it and would you go again. If not > and you are interested in one - what has prevented you thus far?

I haven't been on one. I'm not really interested in doing one so much as curious about why other folks do.

I mean, don't get me wrong -- meditation itself is an incredibly powerful, basic tool that a lot of people need. This is, it's kinda like a hammer or screw driver in that it's simplistic-but-essential.

I guess it sounds sorta like a book club to me -- like, why join a book club rather than just read your own selection of books whenever you want? And I guess it's because there's a social element to it that people enjoy, perhaps moreso than the actual activity itself?

That said, in a book club, people can talk about the contents of the book afterwards. What might people share of meditation, given that it's such a personal experience?

\---

To note it, I suspect that the answer to my question is that meditation retreats can help introduce people who don't normally meditate much to the basic practice, sorta like a quick-start class. But I'd be interested in what people've done them before have to say of what they took from it.

<comment><USER7> I agree on the idea of these sort of things feeling like a "book club."

A recent example that worked for me: I took a short vacation by myself. I went to one event I wanted to see, and then for the rest of the time I had zero plans. Basically, I walked around the beach, walked around town, ate food, and that was it.

Was it mindful meditation? Not really. But the effects were the same or similar.

I think some people should really just take time off work more often (mandatory paid leave in the United States, please!)

<comment><USER8> > Was it mindful meditation? Not really. But the effects were the same or > similar.

I do have a suspicion that a not-small portion of the benefits of a meditation retreat is more about the retreating than the meditation. I'd probably feel "OMG I haven't felt this good in years" amazing after 10 days away from electronics and family & work obligations, even if I just read books and napped and took nature walks the whole time. Meditating instead would probably work too.

<comment><USER9> There's no reason that reading books, taking naps and nature walks couldn't be meditating as well. Meditation is about consciously moving your awareness into your higher self. And while some styles of meditation are good at teaching you what this looks and feels like, they are not the only way to achieve the "meditation" state of mind.

The highest level meditation is one that creates no separation between the physical reality and the higher self. A completely open stream of consciousness that allows the physical self to be happy with whatever physical reality is, at any given moment in time. That generally doesnt look like a retreat, instead it's a relaxed advance, an acceptance of what is, an engagement with the world around you, be that a good book or a nice walk through the earths natural creation, or a nice refreshing nap with a trip to the dreamlands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wouldn't go for just meditation but I'd like to take a few months off to learn kung fu in China. I have seen a number of live in programs where you do 8 hours or so of kung fu a day. They cost on the order of $1000 a month all in, for $5400 they will let you stay for a year.

Something like this: [https://www.shaolinskungfu.com/Accommodation.html](https://www.shaolinskungfu.com/Accommodation.html)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing....

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have gone on Catholic retreats, which are similar to what I think you're talking about, but not identical. The point of a retreat is to spend time with the person you should love most of all, getting to know them better.

Every retreat I have been on has been worth it. Some have been easier to see the benefits at once, others have benefits planted that are reaped later.

<comment><USER13> "The point of a retreat is to spend time with the person you should love most of all, getting to know them better."

You're being too clever for me. Do you mean yourself? God? Your actual romantic partner?

<comment><USER14> Retreat-shaped vacations are usually about isolation. To a true believer, you are always with god. Therefore the only logical conclusion is that it is about you.

<comment><USER15> Nope. I've spent enough time among Catholics and other Christians to know that "the person you should love most of all" would be unequivocally understood as God. In their worldview, just because God is with you all the time doesn't mean you are actually free to give him all your attention and focus on that relationship.

<comment><USER14> For a certain brand of Christian, you are entirely correct. This argument is so compelling that I'm actually doubting my original interpretation of the text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I went to the OSHO meditation center in Pune, India for a few days, while working over there about a year ago. It changed my entire outlook on life, non-withstanding the Netflix documentary "Wild Wild Country" which is about the meditation group.

I did three days of 15 hour different meditations. To this day, I still feel totally relaxed during contentious business projects. I plan on going again at some point.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been on 2 10 day Vipassana meditation retreats (as taught by SN Goenka).

I had bad OCD that was entirely cured after 2 10-day courses + an average of 2-3 hours of meditation practice every day for 1-2 years.

However, even 2 hours of meditation practice for 6 months after the first retreat got my OCD to a very manageable level.

Really recommend going!

<comment><USER3> _average of 2-3 hours of meditation practice every day_

Wow, that is insane (in a good way)! how long did it take to reach that stage?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I did a few of 10-day silent retreats a few years ago. I really enjoyed them and I've been wanting to do another. I think they helped give me a different perspective on the world and see some of my issues in a different light.

But I had significant difficulty incorporating the practice and those lessons into my everyday life. It's just hard to get anything useful out of daily practice when I'm subjected to work, phone, tv, internet, etc. I just end up to scatterbrained. I wish I understood how to live in the modern world with some of the clarity that I had during the retreats.

<comment><USER19> My parents and one sibling did the 10 day vipassana retreats and praise the experience extensively. They would like to go back and also found it extremely difficult.

They all went vegan for a while after, all talk about turning off device notifications, and were extremely calm and confident for months after.

I read a vipassana book and think it's a good perspective to gain for a lot of parts of life and makes me want to try a 10 day retreat at some point.

<comment><USER18> > They all went vegan for a while after

Haha...I can see how that'd happen. The food at the retreat was amazing. I was most of the way through my first 10-day before I realized that the food itself was a challenge for me to stay in the present moment and not look forward to whatever amazing dishes they'd serve in the next meal. Maybe it's just the centers in Asia, but it really helps you understand what's possible in a vegan diet. So much of the vegan food you see in the US is either really bland or just swaps out the meat for tofu or other such vegan protein. The dishes that they served were extremely varied and seemed conceived from the start to be vegan. Many of the people there who eat more meat than I do said they expected to be challenged by having to eat vegan for 10 days, but actually enjoyed it and never felt like it was missing anything.

Foodgasm aside, I think it's something that everyone with any interest should try at least once to see whether it's for them. If nothing else, just unplugging from the world and doing a digital detox can be a worthwhile experience. I'd encourage you to find a way to go, even if it doesn't become a constant part of your life going forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yes! The first few were super tough (and not fun) but I got a lot out of them and gradually they've gotten easier, although just as productive.

So many people in the comments mentioned retreats but I'm surprised not a single person mentioned enlightenment. The whole point of retreats is to get you to a point where you willfully and intentionally seek freedom from suffering, but it seems like a ton of people get stuck in the retreat treadmill. Living a happier, more peaceful life is one thing but it's very possible to _completely_ eradicate the subjective experience of suffering (or at least eliminate enough of it that it's largely unnoticeable). Enlightenment is very accessible and super achievable, especially now with the internet.

I highly recommend reading Living Realization ([https://www.amazon.com/Living- Realization-Simple-Plain-Engli...](https://www.amazon.com/Living-Realization- Simple-Plain-English-Non-Duality-ebook/dp/B01E6FS3WQ)) or Falling Into Grace ([https://www.amazon.com/Falling-into-Grace-Insights- Suffering...](https://www.amazon.com/Falling-into-Grace-Insights-Suffering- ebook/dp/B004LLINOY)) to see if any of it resonates. Once you get what all this is about then retreats become a practice ground towards a goal rather than a stabilizing mechanism or a way to feel better for a bit.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yes, I'm a software engineer, predominantly C++, research, backend stuff, operational transform and multi-master replication ([http://cedanet.com.au/ceda/](http://cedanet.com.au/ceda/)). I've been doing Vipassana in the tradition of SN Goenka for 23 years, and having done quite a few 10-day silent retreats, I can say that they have been extremely beneficial to many aspects of my life, including technical stuff. I have also recently been quite interested in Culadasa's "The Mind Illuminated" book. I've recently connected with some other technical people around Culadasa's book.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been on a number of silent retreats that focus on contemplation, usually prayer. Of those the vast majority have been 3-day retreats which begin on a Friday after dinner and end on a Sunday with a lunch. They're a great introduction to silence and meditation and can really allay insecurities people have about taking on a longer retreat. It's where I recommend starting if you're new to retreats.

I've also done 8-day retreats and 10-day retreats. These are my favorites. As someone else in the comments said, it takes a few days for silence to break through your barriers. There's a whole bunch of science on the 3-day effect which seems related to my experience. For me it works like this: day one I'm excited and my mind doesn't shut up. I have a million ideas floating through and I try to grasp them all and to remember the "fruits" of this time for later when I can talk. Early on in my retreats I would journal furiously. I filled a moleskine notebook each day, front and back of pages. It was insane, and also counterproductive. I was taking the dialogue away from my tongue and moving it onto the page. Now I don't journal at all, or I'll do so only every few days and briefly. Even so, day one is a wasted day. It's like my mind is flipping out craving contact. I just need to let it run its course.

On day 2 I have intermittent moments of calm when I can sense the silence underneath everything. I try to spend this day in solitude if possible. It helps to speed up the transition. Remember, silence in a retreat isn't about sound, it's about communication. Don't make eye contact or gestures at others. You're not being silent.

Day 3 for me is when I'm finally at rest. I listen to the little movements of my mind. It's a great time for contemplative prayer, or mindfulness meditation. If you've read anything about Ignatian spirituality, this is where the real enlightening stuff hits. Days 3-7 are a blur of wonder that I never want to end.

That being said, I've also done 30 days in silence and it is there that I'd use the term "life changing." How life changing was it for me? It led to me deciding to leave religious life to get married and start a family. It was not in rebellion to the style of life I was living, but as a result of it. It took me 30 days of contemplation in silence to finally find the answer to the questions that had been bouncing around in my head for a decade.

Would I go again? Certainly.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been to a 10 day vipassana retreat. It didn't change my life at all.

It felt a bit euphoric the first few days but then it wears off.

If you continue your daily meditation practice, I believe it might have a net positive effect.

My friend went about 5 times now. He swears by it.

Two anecdotes.

</comment><comment><USER24> +1 for ayuhuasca retreats

<comment><USER25> For people interested in the therapeutic use of psychedelics and people seeking (legal) psychedelic retreat recommendations, I compiled some info here: [https://tripsafe.org/psychedelic- therapy/](https://tripsafe.org/psychedelic-therapy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The retreat was great. Coming back to a spouse with an undiagnosed personality disorder was traumatic.

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone recommend any in India

<comment><USER28> Highly recommend Vipassana Meditation (S.N. Goenka [https://www.dhamma.org](https://www.dhamma.org)). They have centers all over India. You gotta start with a 10-day course.

<comment><USER27> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have been on two 10-day Vipassana meditation retreats. One took place in Texas and the other in France. The first one was much more valuable for me. It was SE of Dallas iirc next to a ranch where there were some cows so it was a really serene place. I had been meditating beforehand for a year or so which definitely helped prepare me. There were some people who went into it with no prior preparation, which I thought was pretty crazy but I think just about everyone finished the 10 days, minus maybe 1 or 2 (at least on the guy's side). I don't remember how many there were in total but I'd say about 100.

I had some pretty crazy revelations. For one thing, I had never really sensed my body up until that point. In Vipassana you literally try to feel the physical sensation of every square inch of the body. I remember during one of the group meetings someone was talking about feeling their gums. It hadn't even dawned on me that I could focus on my gums and feel them. It's a pretty wild experience to just sit and focus on physical sensation for 10 days straight. Even when you're not in the meditation hall, you're still focusing on some kind of physical sensation.

Another interesting revelation I had came when I got sick from eating some of the food. They cooked really amazing Indian food, but my body just wasn't used to it and I got the shits for a few days. It was a really weird experience not being able to tell anyone that I felt sick (of course if it got bad then I would tell the supervisor assigned to my group). I had pretty bad diarrhea for 2 or so days. I had never thought how much I depended on being able to complain to others about feeling discomfort to give me a sense of well-being. It was interesting how my mind started to consider all these negative scenarios if something bad happened and no one knew I was feeling ill so they didn't come to check on me. It was kind of funny going through my head wondering if I should tell the supervisor that I was shitting myself just for future reference in case I shat myself to death. I decided I was over-reacting and just kind of observed my mind freak out about it.

I remember having the sensation of having a big revelation although not entirely sure of the content. I kind of just assume that it's integrated itself into my mind. It may have had something to do with the idea that what my mind perceived as reality didn't necessarily have any truth to it. Particularly when it comes to how I perceive others' perceptions of me. For example, I could have a sense of how a friend, family member or even some random person thinks of me that might be totally off base from what they themselves actually think about me. An interesting book that touches upon this topic is "One, No One and One Hundred Thousand" by Luigi Pirandello.

Aside from that, it's mostly given me the ability to just take a break from feeling stress/anxiety/anguish, focus on the physical sensation that is associated with it and take some comfort in knowing that it's not permanent. There's the whole idea that when something negative occurs in our lives, we prolong its existence by trying to push it away when instead we should observe it, let it pass and maybe even learn from it. As someone who was diagnosed w/Hashimoto's I've had periods of my life where I feel really shitty and at one point I dipped into a really dangerous depression (prior to the retreat, part of what motivated me to do it). I should note that I mistakenly had the impression that meditation would simply let me "zen" myself out of these modes. Unfortunately, they seem to carry some inertia with them and so meditation was not the superpower I thought it might be to attain a state of happiness and well-being at any instant I desired, however I certainly take value in my ability to not amplify them anymore and to be able to look at them objectively and take the necessary steps to dig myself out of those holes.

I've also done several Ayahuasca retreats, some of which I really valued for their emphasis on connection with the people doing them with me. Silent meditations are great, but they certainly don't fulfill any need for social interaction as you pretty much have to pretend that the others don't exist and can't talk to them. I did think it was funny not to hold the door for people behind me going into the meditation or dining hall with the justification that as far as I was concerned, they weren't there.

I also did funny things during the retreat like saving worms from getting stepped on when they tried to cross the sidewalks or staring at ant hills. It's a crazy experience being with your own mind for 10 days, I'd recommend it to everyone. Not easy, but entirely doable and will almost certainly change your perspective on life. I scheduled mine through dhamma.org, it's totally free (free housing, free food) and they accept donations at the end if you'd like. I do think the program needs to be updated a bit to integrate better with today's society, but of course that's easier said than done.</comment>


Modelling a Wealth Tax: A Response to Paul Graham - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/konsbn/6bc484d58476c5c36169c7ab4ad49976 <comment><USER2> Some feedback for the author - including statements like "Or how not to be stupid", "half of your wealth will go to the big bad government", "moronically ignorant of basic economics" and "apocalypse hasn't happened" really detracts from their arguments and makes it seem like more of an angry screed rather than a well thought out argument.

It would have been a fine article without the childish attacks.

<comment><USER3> I personally think even with the language it's a fine post. At least, even If I don't agree with the language, I would critique the content.

He does a fine job in rebutting that PG post which made no sense and painted a very bleak picture of wealth tax. IMO this shouldn't have been flagged.

<comment><USER4> A fine rebuttal would acknowledge that a charitable reading of pg's original post includes the effect of growth---you're still left with the same fraction of wealth if not for the tax. It's not even a stretch to say that that's what pg originally meant, the phrasing in [1] is pretty careful and specific. FTA's thesis is entirely predicated on an error that arguably isn't there. It would do much better by acknowledging that yes, even under optimistic growth conditions the tax will take a big bite out of the final wealth, but that even under conservative estimates of growth the hypothetical founder will still be ahead. This is a facile "well-actually".

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/20200818133017/http://paulgraham....](http://web.archive.org/web/20200818133017/http://paulgraham.com/wtax.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like this model doesn't account for the fact that when you pay a wealth tax, you have to liquidate cash — and doing so will generally trigger taxable gains (which could be taxed at close to 50%, between state and federal taxes).

As a result, you have to gross up the cash liquidation amount to cover the income taxes that will be owed, and this can substantially increase the amount you need to liquidate. For example, if you need $100,000 to pay for your wealth tax, you might need to liquidate $181,000 to end up with this amount after taxes (assuming a 45% combined rate). You can get lower rates with qualified dividends or capital gains, but I imagine if there is the political will to enact a wealth tax, the capital gains rates will rise up to be the same as wage rates.

As you can see, accounting for income taxes can nearly double the required liquidation. Perhaps I missed it, but it would be interesting to see how this affects the model.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think pg's original post was a bit tone-deaf, but personal attacks are poor form. I'd also say that the good-faith interpretation of the argument does in fact take growth into account -- a 1% wealth tax would leave you with ~55% of the wealth you would have had _if not for the tax_.

(BTW it seems there've been some changes made to pg's post[1][2])

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/20200818133017/http://paulgraham....](http://web.archive.org/web/20200818133017/http://paulgraham.com/wtax.html)

[2] [http://paulgraham.com/wtax.html](http://paulgraham.com/wtax.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> > _I recently came across the article by Paul Graham on modelling a wealth > tax. Where with simple mathematics of Geometric progression he makes the > case against wealth tax because in about 60 years nearly half of your wealth > will go to the big bad government._

Well, that would be a red flag in PG's argument already. Who said it's bad for your wealth to go to the govenment (assuming you still have wealth to spare and take care of all your needs and even your grandchildren up to 3-4 generations, as this is about big wealth)?

In a normal country, the governmnet is not some enemy, it's the public pool of resources and planning public goods/policy/infrastructure/protection/etc for a country.

If on the other hand live somewhere where the government is an enemy, then you have bigger problems than part of your wealth going to them, and you should fix those first, not the tax.

<comment><USER7> > Well, that would be a red flag in PG's argument already. Who said it's bad > for your wealth to go to the govenment

PG didn't say it was bad. That was a motive imputed erroneously by this author. He simply provided a model of how much it would cost, and what people might do in response to that cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> To be fair, there isnt much content to this post other than an inflammatory remark ("he is almost moronically ignorant of basic economics") and some graphs which can be summarized by "tax rate is offset by growth rate". What would be more useful would be some discussion of the research about how this has played out in France, Switzerland, etc.

<comment><USER9> One thing I haven't seen in the discussion is the effect of the tax on the distribution of outcomes.

I'm not sure what the latest numbers are, but if 90% of startups are near 0 return for founders, and 1% are the home run swings which made it worth starting the company to begin with - then when do proposals affect the expected value for starting a company. This notebook doesn't show anything other than 'if you were going to make a bunch, you'll still have more than zero' which isn't useful.

Startups are in the land of "fat tails" \- so talking about a policy saying it's fine for for most people since the people at the extreme in the fat tail are doing fine seems to be thinking under-critically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't this analysis orthogonal to pg's claim that the wealth tax is taking away X% of your startup equity?

Yes, if your startup is growing by 10% YoY your wealth is still going up even under the tax. However instead of you owning A% at the end, you only own <<A% because you've been selling equity every year to pay the government. Just look at your first plot between 1% and 3% tax. A delta of 2% tax results in losing 70% of your value.

Your post seems to suggest the idea "Since you're making so much anyway it's ok to take away most of it." Though of course there is a balance, I think this kind of trade would greatly reduce risk-taking and entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hypothetically, let's suppose I wholly own a small business. Maybe it's a SaaS. Maybe it's a restaurant. Maybe it's a plumbing contracting company. Doesn't matter.

Let's say the business generates $1M/year in free cash flows.

Give me a number: What's my net worth? How much wealth tax should I be asked to pay?

(With income tax it's relatively straightforward: you're taxing actual transfers of cash or cash-equivalents from account A to account B that happened in time period Y. If the societal goal is to achieve more progressive redistribution of wealth, isn't it much simpler to just modify the income tax brackets and rates?)

<comment><USER12> I see it as similar to the land value tax versus property tax. Property taxes (as I would argue) aren't ideal because it discourages people from making improvement to their land. It is good (both for the owner and society) if they improve it and it is bad (both for the owner and society) if they let it stay empty or rot. Similarly, capital gains taxes discourage people from building new companies and investing in new ideas. A wealth tax would, instead, discourage people from hoarding their money in investments that don't produce new value.

I do think the implementation is difficult with privately owned businesses. I agree - it seems very difficult to do so but not impossible to do if we figure that the wealth tax would only be implemented for those individuals holding stakes in companies worth more than 10M (or whatever)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The analysis here compares among wealth taxes between 1% and 5%. It does _not_ include models with wealth taxes below 1%; in particular 0% is not present. Also, it would have been nice to see a normalized comparison of the ratios between predicted long-term wealth levels at different growth rates -- this can be weakly inferred visually from the graphs, but all I can say is "vaguely similar".

</comment><comment><USER12> We always hear about lowering capital gains tax because it stops people from investing in new ideas. I'm sympathetic to this to a degree - and that's why a wealth tax (if implementable) is superior. Instead of being taxed at what you end up with you are taxed with what you start with. This would (as long as you can't get around it) encourage people to actually invest in new ideas instead of sitting on their money.

The idea that PG "modeled" a wealth tax without factoring in that investments grow (not just due to increasing their success - but many investments grow slowly and surely due to boring factors like inflation and population growth) is intentionally obfuscating the truth.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would also note (generally I'm a fan of PG's writing, but as an economist this one was pretty juvenile), while PG implemented a basic cost calculation on wealth with an assumption of no growth, aside from not including growth/returns on his wealth, nowhere did he model the benefits received, either to himself or others, from the revenue apportioned from the taxation.

That's why its called cost/BENEFIT analysis...

<comment><USER15> I pay far more in taxes than the benefits in receive; clearly that is the case for most that are paying; if you factor in the debt and inflation it's even worse.

<comment><USER16> If in the US:

Roads

Available utilities due to regulatory planning with normally private companies

Your food supply is generally trustworthy

Social security.

Social safety net hospitals.

Generally clean and monitored environment to avoid carcinogens (less more recently).

Well defended.

I wonder if taxes are so high that anyone's income taxes, capital gains taxes, and consumption taxes are higher than the mulitipicative benefits from the above.

<comment><USER15> Sure great, you've described a tiny percent of the US taxes.

There are some assumptions built it to this - that if the US government didn't do it, it wouldn't get done.

But some areas:

1\. Extremely high housing costs due to zoning restrictions and government subsidized mortgages. 2\. Extremely high medical costs due to regulation and central planning 3\. Extremely high educational costs due to subsidized student loans. 4\. Over 1 million people in jail 5\. Involved in military actions and destabilizing actions around the world. 6\. The war on drugs

But even with that, based on the things above - is there any point at which taxes are too high? Why not make them 100% and then the government can provide food, shelter, and spending money?

<comment><USER16> The things I described are not a tiny percent of taxes. You should revisit your assertion here.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:US_Federal_Budget_Comparison_2016_vs._2015.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Note that the ipy notebook is not rendered on mobile AFAICT. Switch to "desktop site" if you're having trouble.

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't 2% just the inflation? So back to the Paul's model if you take account of it.

</comment><comment><USER19> This all assumes the tax payer isn't generating any additional income, which I think is a big omission.

</comment><comment><USER19> The original PG post deserved to a rebuttal but I think this falls short.

</comment><comment><USER20> This post is also missing so much. It's almost worse than PG's one, which didn't really pretend to be an in-depth analysis. Some starting points:

\- Taxes are guaranteed, but growth isn't. It also doesn't come for free, it takes work. You can't just say "hey S&P returned 10% last year, I'll assume that for a given". Also wealth is often non-diversifiable - Elon Musk's or Jeff Bezos' wealth are tied to their companies. They could feasibly take a 50% tumble in a year (can't see how but it's totally possible). Of course these two will still be very rich even then, but what about 'minor' millionaires?

\- People with these levels of wealth already pay, or should pay, high taxes on other things: CGT, VAT, income tax, corporation tax, land / real estate taxes. If they don't, then this is the real problem, you shouldn't fix it by just adding another patch on top of a stack of leaky patches. Already, in all developed economies I know of, a huge chunk of income tax comes from the top earners.

\- And further to that, taxation isn't simply about maximal resource extraction from a productive population. Tax is a societal commitment to fund things we all care about. It is generally widely understood and accepted that wealthier people pay more, because the poor can't. But when the rhetoric becomes "let's extract as much as we can from the rich, look here's a notebook that shows we can", I'm not surprised people start looking at tax avoidance. As the rich person, you become dissociated from the society - they are only there to shear you, so why should you make an effort to give back?

\- And it's not inherently wrong to be rich, also. Sure, some people are rich and abuse other people, possibly with some strong ties between one and the other. But the solution isn't a punitive tax. In a way, that makes it worse - makes it feel like you paid your dues and now you're really above the law.

\- The point of wealth is that it should be productive. So the business of being rich is to have money, have it return an interest higher than inflation (on which you already pay CGT usually), and consuming the excess. It's not enough for the tax to be below average growth rates.

Perhaps I should explain, that I write this from (a) outside US where there doesn't seem to be such a toxic inequality in the society (and not simply because of wealth taxes...), and (b) I'm not rich, but hey, I'm working hard to maybe be there one day. I don't want my hard work to then turn around on someone's misguided notebook.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why is that flagged?

<comment><USER22> Read the other comments here. The author is driving people away with messages like "how to not be stupid", and misses the mark with his assumptions.

Example: he doesn't take into account the fact that investments can and _do_ go down in value, and you have to sell to pay taxes, even when the value drops.</comment></comment>


Scientists Extend Quantum States by 22 Milliseconds - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a33628698/scientists-extend-quantum-state-22-milliseconds/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is actually a big deal as it's 10,000 times longer than previous qubit coherence. I reckon quantum computing will be mainstream in the next couple of years.</comment>


A new theorem predicts stationary black holes must have at least one light ring - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-06-theorem-stationary-black-holes.html <comment><USER2> Some actual details from the article once you get past the initial five paragraphs of breathless popscience-journalism:

> "In other words, we do not assume that one law of gravity is correct, but > only assume that the correct law of gravity (i.e., whichever that is) allows > the existence of black holes," Cunha and Herdeiro said. "Then, forcing the > spacetime structure to obey to some regularity requirements, the existence > of a black hole implies that there must be a light ring outside the horizon. > In fact, a rotating black hole must have at least two light rings: one for > light circling the black hole in the same spinning direction as the black > hole and another one for light circling the black hole in the opposite > direction."

</comment><comment><USER3> What's a light ring from a time perspective? Seems as close to time travel as it gets, but that's just my pop intuition around timelike curves in spacetime. If it's a closed timelike curve outside the event horizon, is that a big deal for causality formalisms?

<comment><USER4> It is a closed lightlike curve. There is no impact on causality, as time does not pass on a lightlike curve.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I'd been dividing it between spacelike and timelike. I forgot there was a third option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r What does "stationary" mean in this context? There's no fixed reference point in the universe, so everything should be moving.

<comment><USER5> Stationary means a blackhole that is not evolving in time---one that is in a stationary state [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stationary_state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stationary_state) Note that the article focuses on the QM meaning of stationary, but there's a perfectly good classical analogue: something which is not evolving in time.

That doesn't mean that the BH can't spin, it's that the mass, charge, angular momentum isn't changing.</comment></comment>


MIT develops new tool that can interrupt infinite loops - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/08/02/mit-researchers-develop-tool-to-resuscitate-frozen-programs/

<comment><USER3> This is a good line of investigation. I don't understand all the harrumphing here, except possibly as a means of self-congratulations at to why the harrumpher in question didn't bother inventing this tool themselves and how they understand the "halting problem" in a way not known at MIT.

As the economist famously joked in response to 'how are you'... "Compared to what?" The comparison here is to killing the program and losing all the data.

Obviously there are some big limitations on this - especially given that the state of the program isn't necessarily entirely defined in terms of the process itself, but also a series of possibly stateful network connections and os resources.

Another big limitation is that a straight-up infinite loop at the level of the binary isn't necessarily the only way that a program could get stuck - <USER2> could be going around quite a complex loop at the binary level in response to an _interpreted_ loop, and killing the whole interpreter isn't necessarily going to return the program into a usable state.

That being said, what else are you going to do in this case? A number of the alternate solutions here seem to involve time travel.

Some fun possibilities - if you can replicate the OS state, and there's no important network state held open by the program, you can make a bunch of copies of the broken program and try lots of different approaches. You might also be able to fire up the program cleanly, get to the main event loop, identify what that looks like, and just magically splice that state back on top of the broken program in the hope that whatever is happening in global data structures is self-contained enough to recover from.

I understand that there are many reasons why this probably won't work... that being said, the baseline here is zero (especially if the users are made very aware that this program isn't a safety net of any kind and don't become more careless thinking that there's a magic 'fixit' program out there).

<comment><USER4> I'm one of the authors of this paper and this comment pretty much hits it on the head. Jolt is an investigation in developing tools to help users get more use out of their programs when the alternative is failure. Because the reality is that there will always be programs that fail.

Most of the comments here are pretty fair about where Jolt might not be applicable (busy loops) and how this approach could be integrated with development; we touch on many these points in the paper (already linked by someone in the comments).

All of our emails are on the interwebs, so feel free to ping us if you want more information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've done this with MS Word and the VS debugger. Word crashed while I was editing a huge document. I simply skipped a few instructions down, returned to Word, saved the document, and restarted Word. When your options are either 1) crash, or 2) possibly recover to some working state, it's pretty easy to choose option 2.

<comment><USER6> i wish i could do that for safari

<comment><USER7> You probably can:

      $ gdb /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari $PID

iTunes, annoyingly, uses Apple's stupid little "please don't ptrace me" flag, which is a minor inconvenience, but fairly readily circumventable.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if that's to make it harder to crack FairPlay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not even a single mention of the halting problem?

<comment><USER10> Noob question time: what's the halting problem?

<comment><USER3> The halting problem is an profound bit of theoretical CS well-explained on this thread.

However, the actual halting problem is moot in most of the references I see to it, as the halting problem is usually misused by the half-educated to make claims that 'nothing useful can ever be inferred about the behavior of any program, ever'.

For example, we built a tool to either estimate a reasonable ceiling on the stack usage (whole-program) or give up; it works very well and can detect when the structure of the program prevents this tool from operating correctly (nasty stack mischief or stack adjustments appearing in 'unusual' places). Quite useful for us, especially because we control the source code and know that we don't do naughty things to our own stack.

Entertainingly, on the way to build this tool, we encountered at a couple screeds about how this problem just plain can't be solved because it's equivalent to 'solving the halting problem'. Well, yes - in theory, but no - in practice.

<comment><USER11> That problem gets hard very quickly when you deal with recursion. How did you deal with that? (if you did)

<comment><USER3> We control the source code in question, so we deal with it by detecting unexpected recursion and screaming bloody murder.

We have a 'little bit' of recursion where we know that we won't go around the recursion more than once and we've hand-hacked that it. We have similar hacks to deal with indirect calls.

I'm not saying we've solved the problem for arbitrary code; I'm saying that solutions that fall very far short of solving problems for arbitrary codes are still enormously useful. Many compiler optimizations don't work for 'arbitrary code' either, for example, and know just enough to bail out when they see an irreducible flowgraph or a bizarre indirect jump, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems to me like this sort of thing could be pretty good for advanced users who understand it's limitations and potential failure modes, but a nightmare waiting to happen for everyone else.

And of course I'm also inclined to suggest that advanced users would be better off attaching gdb to the process to get done what they need to, then coredumping and contacting the developer...

</comment><comment><USER13> Aren't event loops infinite loops where memory might be unchanged for a long time?

<comment><USER14> Presumably the user would not activate Jolt in that case. And technically, unless the loop uses polling, it's not an infinite loop because the program isn't even running.

<comment><USER15> Even an event-driven loop needs to cycle now and then to service timers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The only way this would be valuable for every day use would be for programs that produce "close" output. Think of things like large scale simulations where sub-simulations might go infinite, but if they do and this causes the output of the sub-simulation to change, it isn't likely to cause major changes in the macro-simulation.

Very little code is written that way, but when code is written that way, it allows much more interesting things to happen in software and hardware both.

<comment><USER17> I think you missed the obvious examples of content-creation applications like Word or Photoshop, where you could interrupt an infinite loop, save progress, then restart.

<comment><USER16> I didn't miss them. I think those will be much harder to reliably interrupt loops, especially around file I/O. That infinite loop was caused by bad state and those programs (currently) don't handle bad state well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A good autosave mechanism seems to be a much better solution than this. While that would mean the loss of a little bit of data, it seems better than saving a potentially corrupt file or incorrectly inferring that a loop is infinite.

</comment><comment><USER19> This seems like the software equivalent of smacking a car starter with a hammer to get it to turn.

<comment><USER20> Well more like smacking a Toyotas accellerator to get it to stop ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> First of all the solution of this problem is computationally impossible so this tool makes me feel realy uneasy I'd never use it -- it would actually make predictable easily reproducible bugs impossible to report when this tool is activated. It makes an assumption that infinite loops are just stuck with a false condition and nothing else is affected by that, which I believe is fundametally false.

<comment><USER22> It appears to take memory snapshots. If it detects a repeat in the snapshots it knows that the program will loop indefinitely. Of course it can't detect _all_ infinite loops, but a sizeable subset.

<comment><USER23> In theory I believe it can actually detect all infinite loops, for an extremely generous definition of "can detect". On a finite-memory machine, a computation fails to halt iff it eventually repeats a state, which it must do in finite time, since there are only finitely many possible states (the finite-ness is what makes the halting problem not apply). However, that finite time might be extremely large, perhaps longer than the age of the universe. A <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver> function gives an upper bound on how long it can be.

But yeah, the _practical_ use is to tell you when a computation is already looping, for the large subset of infinite loops that result in states being repeated relatively quickly.

<comment><USER24> > On a finite-memory machine, a computation fails to halt iff it eventually > repeats a state

This is too strong of a statement. Lots of software simply loops, repeating the same state over and over, until an external interrupt occurs.

<comment><USER23> Good point; I guess I was thinking of the simplified textbook case of computations with no external interaction. I wonder if this MIT system is able to exclude the most likely false positives, like polling for input? On the other hand, maybe polling too long for input counts as an infinite---or at least, too long---loop for their use-case of interrupting user programs that seem to be hanging, so that the user can save.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the better way to do this would be to throw a "JoltException" which you could catch in your program if you wanted to, like any other exception.

It seems like it'd be a huge mess to try to write code succeeding the loop which tries to handle the case where your loop code didn't complete like you expected it to.

</comment><comment><USER26> OP looks like a spammer for bostinnovation.com: <http://news.ycombinator.org/submitted?id=pgatzke>

<comment><USER27> There's a fuzzy line between spammer & contributor.

<comment><USER26> I made the comment because Reddit has some bostinnovation.com spammers: <http://www.reddit.com/user/joeymullette> & <http://www.reddit.com/user/chezral>

I'm guessing they have employees who just post to social news sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> my experience from debugging is that breaking out of a loop in this way is very hit and miss - coupling that with my experience of common office software failures being hard crashes rather than hangs and i can't imagine this tool being /that/ useful. I'd much rather have a tool that does autosaving at a very regular interval - I've written many throwaway tools for that in the past mostly when dealing with old versions of excel being abused to solve database/code problems... still this is better than nothing i guess

as for the nature of the halting problem meaning this can't work??? that only displays a lack of understanding...

all in all this article and the comments reinforce my view that academia diverges too far from the practical realities of software development. sure we need academic research and education, i won't deny it, but the noise making should be reserved for after practical success has actually occurred.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's common for the runtime of game scripting language to have infinite loop detections - for example if loop takes more than 5ms and hasn't reached (or called) specific point/mark then it's reported, stopped or restarted.

But going to the next line...

</comment><comment><USER30> Link to the full paper for those interested: <http://people.csail.mit.edu/rinard/paper/ecoop11.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER31> TLDR: Power button or inconsistent results, now you can choose.

</comment><comment><USER32> What if you wrote an infinite loop, and wanted it that way?

There are plenty of legitimate uses for an infinite loop, a REPL, a server, etc.

<comment><USER33> Oh look! there is a little note: "Do not use if you need an infinite loop not to stop."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The RunStop key?

</comment><comment><USER35> Can't think of a use-case for this? .... maybe if you have some seriously "legacy" process running somewhere that loves to stall but patching is not an option for some obscure reason? ... space probes?

</comment><comment><USER36> I thought the message at the end about people expecting full correctness was a bit off; after all, if we expected fully-correct programs, we would be proving them instead of writing C.

<comment><USER37> They're poking fun at the formal methods community, which spends a lot of time doing research in this direction. Percolation of these techniques back to industry has been... less than stellar.</comment></comment>


Teaching Essay Writing in Pyongyang - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/what_it_was_like_to_teach_essay_writing_to_north_korean_graduate_students.single.html <comment><USER2> If you liked this, you might want to take a look at Andrew Holloway's "A Year in Pyongyang", available free online at the link below. It describes the experience of a translator in 1987-88, but not all that much has changed in the years that have passed since.

[http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang.html](http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang.html)

<comment><USER3> It's an excellent book.

He's admittedly sympathetic to socialist ideals, but there are obvious visible problems in that state. So he generally does a nice job of "on the one hand, on the other hand..." (ie, On the one hand, some North Koreans would beg for cigarettes and alcohol off of foreigners, on the other hand, they are incredibly nice people and most of them would only take gifts after much insistence.)

His asides become steadily more bitter as the book (and his time in NK) goes on though. One of my favorite bits is after he's gotten pretty caustic, right after explaining how he saw a bunch of students using rocks to pulverize discarded pavement at a nearly futile pace:

 _It would be wrong of me to give the impression that the great socialist construction was uniformly stranded, literally, in the Stone Age. It was around this time that brand-new push-button automatic gates were installed at the entrance to the factory next door. These caused a sensation for the first few days. All day long the people 's guard dolls were inundated with requests from the workers to give a demonstration of this miraculous innovation. They had read in Rodong Sinmun and heard on television and radio about the mythical robotisation and computerisation of Juche industry. Now before their very eyes the myth was being translated into reality, in their own humble factory. One could imagine them as they watched the gates glide open and shut at the press of a button, saying to one another, "If only our compatriots in the South could see how advanced we are becoming. Then they would be astonished and rise up as one to oust the puppet clique and drive out the US imperialist aggressor in order to share in our prosperity. But Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo tell lies about us and keep the people in darkness."_

<comment><USER4> Without getting into politics or ideology, I find his initial comment from the second chapter tremendously insightful: that people see what they expect to see. So foreigners expecting North Korea to be rotting hell-hole full of unhappy people will see exactly that, and will express disbelief at any nicety they see: "surely they are hiding something horrible".

This made me think... a while ago, I saw this website by a Western photographer who took some recent pictures of North Korea (it's worth looking at the pictures, they are fascinating: [http://instagram.com/dguttenfelder](http://instagram.com/dguttenfelder)). The pictures allow comments, and predictably most people comment things like "how terrible this dictatorship must be, poor oppressed North Koreans!" When presented with pictures of workers commuting to work, they comment "look how unhappy everyone looks." And they comment the same for a picture showing a band of schoolchildren practicing music, presumably at school: "look how serious the children look, they must feel really unhappy."

In my opinion, regardless of the realities of the harsh life in North Korea, these commenters are projecting their own preconceptions of the country. They see what they expect to see. But I don't think their perceptions are necessarily accurate, because if I took a picture of commuters going to work in my country, they'd see similar unhappy faces. Almost no-one looks happy while taking the train to work. And regarding the schoolchildren... what people see in those pictures doesn't mesh with what the author of the book says: that regardless of everything else, children are truly happy in North Korea.

Maybe life is truly harsh in North Korea, their leaders lie to the population all the time, and it's a truly impoverished country, but still the people are happy, or at least not stereotypically depressed all the time?

<comment><USER5> Kids are happy anywhere, that's the beauty of it, and commuters look unhappy anywhere too. None of that is the problem with North Korea, the problem is much deeper.

If you want to understand why please watch the video from this wonderful lady, who at a very young age understood that her country wasn't a good one: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/an-injury-to- all_b...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/an-injury-to- all_b_3512759.html)

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I'll watch it later.

Note I do not doubt NK is a dictatorship. I'm merely commenting on people's preconceptions strongly coloring what they see in this (or any) country. They expect to see deeply unhappy people (because that's the story that gets told in the West), and that's what they see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Writing inevitably consisted of an endless repetition of his achievements, > none of which was ever verified, since they lacked the concept of backing up > a claim with evidence._

Unfortunately, this kind of thinking is not unique to North Korea. It is present in every society to various degrees, and usually manifests itself in the incoherent tirades of those who almost invariably tout the benefits of "tradition".

The idea that claims need to be backed up with evidence is a relatively recent and rare occurrence in human societies. It needs to be taught, and it's often an uphill battle. In every "traditional" society, rote repetition is the most effective method of turning dubious claims into indisputable truth. The endless hand-copying of ancient texts in every medieval European monastery and Asian academy were not merely a low-tech way to make more books; much more importantly, such activities helped indoctrinate everyone who participated, both consciously and unconsciously. P is true because the Bible says so. Q is true because Confucius said so. R is true because, as the Dothraki say, "it is known." What more proof do you need? It is fucking known. Anyone who says otherwise is obviously delusional, a menace to civilization. And so the Athenians killed Socrates.

And this is the fundamental reason why merely "giving truth its day in court" will not be enough to get rid of the insanity that plagues the politics of every country. People like Snowden, Assange, and Manning helped bring important evidence into the light of day, and even at this very moment, people are working to smuggle evidence into regimes like North Korea. But producing evidence is only half of the battle. In order for evidence to actually serve its purpose, people's brains need to be wired to process it in the right way. We can only hope that _homo sapiens_ has a natural proclivity to think critically, at least some of the time... despite a large body of evidence to the contrary.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd just point out that Suki Kim's book is really an ethical morass, as you can certainly make the argument that she put the people she used to work with in a terrible position.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/world/tales-told-out-of- sc...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/world/tales-told-out-of-school-in- pyongyang-cause-stir.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER8> Interesting. I think I will have to read this now, but I'm not sure I want to pay for it if it's funded by deception.

A couple of thoughts just from the article:

Bad deeds do not wipe out good, nor vice versa. If Christians are helping the impoverished or teaching English because they want to convert people, that doesn't make giving a hungry person food any less of a good thing to do (this is a general example).

When she says "it's another code word for what they're doing," she doesn't go on to explain what that means. What ARE they doing? I think if she had a concrete, non-easily-objected-to explanation of the problems with what she'd observed, she'd have come out and said it. She describes their general goals, as she sees them, earlier in the article, but provides no evidence or justification for those conclusions.

<comment><USER9> She did explain it, they are seeking to establish a foothold for Christianity in North Korea so that, at some point in the future when the regime falls or changes its mind about religion, they can "capture" the country. This isn't a very complicated idea, it's how missionaries operate in countries that frown on their work.

<comment><USER8> I understand the idea, but without any evidence, it seems kinda paranoid to just assume that is automatically the case. Hopefully the book explains why she reached that conclusion about her colleagues.

In any case, assuming it is true, I don't support it necessarily - but again, it is hard for me to say "no, bad!" when they are also making a legitimate effort to help North Koreans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When the DPRK regime falls, these people are going to be _beyond_ confused.

<comment><USER2> Probably not as much as you think. The author seems to be taking her students' comments and writings at face value, but her students _have_ to praise the Great Leader and kimchi and whatnot in public, regardless of what they actually think. Remember, her students were the elite of DPRK, the kids of high-ranking party functionaries etc, who certainly have access to Western goods and South Korean TV and whatnot. They know full well that much of what they are taught and the line they have to parrot is a lie; but there is just _no_ safe channel to express that, particularly to a foreigner like her.

Now they may not realize the full extent to which everything is a lie, and there's probably a few particularly dim true believers in the mix, but in the North Korea of the 2010s, post murderous famine and in an era of mushrooming black markets, the failure of Juche is pretty obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So how does DPRK survive? How do they keep sending (or trying to send) missiles, exploding nukes, etc.? Surely there are _some_ people there who know that DPRK is all make-believe?

Also, I didn't get how she was able to access the 'net, but not her students?

<comment><USER12> The computer with the net access is simply forbidden to them, and not accessible. Teachers may use it. They may not. It's that simple.

<comment><USER13> Even if they did find stuff on said computer somehow, they have been taught it is lies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great idea. Someone has to write all 100,000 of Kim Jong-Un's essays.</comment>


Facebook updates React Patent grant - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/b8ba8c83f318b84e42933f6928f231dc0918f864

<comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9356508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9356508).

</comment><comment><USER3> Blog post about the change here: [https://code.facebook.com/posts/1639473982937255/updating- ou...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/1639473982937255/updating-our-open- source-patent-grant/)

Relevant snippet:

 _Any inadvertent doubts [the previous Facebook-specific grant to the BSD license] introduces detract from what we want our program to be about: world- class communities and world-class software._

 _So today we 're pushing a new version of the grant. Its main significant improvement is that it is clearer with regard to what we mean by 'affiliates' and 'assertions' and the circumstances under which the grant terminates, all of which had caused confusion._</comment>


How to Build a Modern Data Center - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/data_centers/229402354

<comment><USER2> > _"There will be more to come, but the art of data center design has finally > gotten around to addressing its major sources of wasted power. "We may move > one day from 1.07 to 1.06 or even 1.05," he said. But there will be no more > announcements of 38% power savings in a new data center versus the one that > came before it, he said. Today is the time for dramatic gains. Tomorrow's > gains will come much harder."_

\---

The future measurement will no longer be PUE, but compute density in a given square footage.

Especially when you have single service facilities like Facebook, and standardized architecture offerings like Amazon.

However - what we _hopefully_ will see is "Designed for the compute cluster" chassis offerings from the major vendors, based on the work of Google, and now Facebook's open compute project.

The primary issues we have with DC design, and that are addressed by the open compute model, is that you have all these various vendors; PDU, UPS, Power Bus, Rack, Server, Cable Plant Components --- All these things "fit" together, but they are not _DESIGNED_ together.

Meaning that they all get designed in a relative silo, though around standards that make them connectable, but not to become something greater than the sum of their parts.

Systems like hot aisle containment are still built effectively ad-hoc and custom for each datacenter.

<comment><USER3> Density may increase TCO in many cases by making cooling less efficient, so I'm not sure it's a good metric. (I worked on blade servers in 2001, but later I came to the conclusion that the demand for extreme density around 2000-2002 was really just an attempt to scam colo providers, not a genuine advantage.)

I agree that the current choice between standard-but-inefficient and efficient-but-nonstandard leaves room for new standards.</comment></comment>


Chicago introduces 9% tax on cloud services (on AWS, Netflix etc.) - <AUTHOR> http://www.reedsmith.com/The-City-of-Chicago-Moves-Aggressively-to-Tax-The-Cloud-06-17-2015/

<comment><USER2> Chicago has some of the highest city taxes in the US. I'm not surprised.</comment>


The Evolution of Airbnb's Front End - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/spikebrehm/the-evolution-of-airbnbs-frontend

<comment><USER2> The most interesting take-away is that they are moving away from using [1] Rendr for their isomorphic code, and built something to handle pre-rendering react components that are injected into their rails app.

[1] [https://github.com/rendrjs/rendr](https://github.com/rendrjs/rendr)</comment>


Hacked companies fight back with controversial "strike-back" steps - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/17/us-media-tech-summit-cyber-strikeback-idUSBRE85G07S20120617 <comment><USER2> It amuses me that people are considering whether some of this business should be taken out of the private sector. And given to whom? The army?

We're not living the cyberpunk future, yet, but sometimes the only thing I think we're missing are the trench-coats and floating skateboards.

</comment><comment><USER3> This 'strike back' notion is not new. I remember in the mid-90s there was a silly commercial firewall product called the 'Sidewinder' that touted the ability to 'strike back' at attackers, which I believe launched a daemon that tried to trace the origin of the attacker. They were targeted at the enterprise and cost like $50k.

The pointy-haired types at the place where I worked at the time were extremely excited by this notion, and thought it was the coolest thing in the world, so guys I knew on the network team were tasked with deploying them into production throughout the various zones in our network topology.

I remember the horror stories, our network guys couldn't ever to get them to work quite right, and they were always 'striking back' seemingly randomly against phantom threats, eventually causing crippling load on the machine. Eventually the feature was turned off, and a little bit later they were replaced by commodity Linux boxes. To this day whenever this group of friends and I discuss a new firewall product or technology we often ask dramatically "BUT CAN IT STRIKE BACK!?"

</comment><comment><USER4> This is stupid. As John Pescatore said, there's no possible positive outcome in this situation. You're feeding the bad guys fake documents, great! They're still on your network, owning your kit, not so great!

Defeating this type of threat is often three small parts technology, three big parts of HR investment and 1 massive part of user awareness training, something I recently commented on here[1].

[1] - [http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/it-security- data-p...](http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/it-security-data- protection/myth-or-fact-debunking-15-of-the-biggest-information-security- myths/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Well that's a nice piece of advertising.</comment>


Why do people love to hate Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/500-words-into-the-future-10014052/why-do-we-love-to-hate-microsoft-10017855/

<comment><USER2> I think there's a large number of people, on HN and elsewhere, who just think it's fashionable to rip on Microsoft. Read through a number of posts on this very site about MSFT and that much is abundantly clear.</comment>


EFF Wins Protection for Time Zone Database - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-protection-time-zone-database

<comment><USER2> Seems like now would be a good time to:

<https://supporters.eff.org/join>, <https://supporters.eff.org/donate> or <https://supporters.eff.org/shop>

<comment><USER3> True.

But to be honest, the apology and climb down were pretty decent too. All too often these things are dragged out and fought tooth and nail, to nobody's benefit but the lawyers.

Which is to say, the astrology people seem to be pretty decent folks about it, not SCO-type bipedal hagfish in 3-piece suits, or Rightshaven-style copyright sharks with a business model based on IP lawsuits.

If I knew anyone who were into astrology-type things, I think I might order them something from Astrolabe, as a small reward for the good behavior in dropping the suit.

Ignoring for a moment the question of whether IP is valid as a concept: if they were misinformed that they had a case, and that their IP had been widely misappropriated without compensation, they probably thought they were in the right. And I'm not sure I can fault them for doing so, given the advice they were likely given.

Whoever gave them the bad legal advice might have led them to believe they were on to a legal jackpot. It doesn't seem to be a big, money-spinning operation, so the case might have offered the possibility of a more comfortable old age for these people.

A little extra business from appreciative tech types would help lessen the sting.

<comment><USER4> > Which is to say, the astrology people seem to be pretty decent folks about > it, not SCO-type bipedal hagfish in 3-piece suits, or Rightshaven-style > copyright sharks with a business model based on IP lawsuits. > If I knew > anyone who were into astrology-type things, I think I might order them > something from Astrolabe, as a small reward for the good behavior in > dropping the suit.

Regardless of stepping down, it was an obviously frivolous suit in the first place. Backing down from BS threats isn't something that should be commended, not ever making them in the first place should be. Who would ever think that time zones are copyrightable _and_ have the cojones to sue over it? An absurd and a waste of everyone's time.

Update: I just read the complaint and their attorney uses her Gmail address for official business. What a joke. Go figure that an astrology company has a fly by night attorney filing obviously BS lawsuits.

<comment><USER5> Better than AOL.....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is there no penalty? Lawyers wasted a lot of billable hours over a suit filed over a copyright claim on facts. If there's no penalty for such frivolous claims, we'll keep having to fight the same fight, wasting money along the way.

<comment><USER7> That's a good question. The article seems to indicate that there was _almost_ a penalty.

FTA:

> In January, EFF advised Astrolabe that Olson and Eggert would move for > sanctions if Astrolabe did not withdraw its complaint. Today's dismissal > followed.

In other words, the complaint was dropped only after penalties were threatened.

Thinking about this issue, I see your point, but I'm not sure how far in that direction we should go. In particular, we don't want to create a mechanism that can easily be used to punish whistle-blowers (for example), simply by finding someone willing to declare their complaint to be frivolous.

<comment><USER8> frivolous is one thing, fraudulent is another. they filed a copyright claim on information that not only do they not own, information that it is not possible to own. this sort of behaviour should be punished.

<comment><USER9> If anyone should be punished, it's the lawyers who enabled them to persist in this course of action.

Perhaps basic facts can't be copyrighted, but sometimes collections of facts are given some protection. The telephone directory is a classic example.

Given the sincerity of the apology, I think it was a honest mistake and a welcome example of the legal system working the way it should.

At least _after_ EFF is on the case. We should go donate to them. Right now.

<comment><USER10> You have your example backward. Feist v. Rural held that telephone books are not subject to copyright. Just because something was laborious to compile does not make it copyrightable.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural>

<comment><USER11> In the US.

In Europe, the law differs. Specifically, 'sweat of the brow', rejected by Feist in the US, is a factor in Europe: <http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html#directive>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love the apology because it sounds exactly like the apology of a man (or organization) who has had it explained to him exactly what a very very bad position his activities have put him in. Really like seeing a complete apology unlike the "We apologize if we caused any discomfort..." ambivalent BS we see all the time.

<comment><USER13> I've seen those referred to as "Notpologies": <http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2012/02/23/the-notpology/>

<comment><USER14> Also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Obviously the lawsuit was a non-starter, any company that realized this would retract the complaint, but I was impressed by the apology. It seems like in every suit I hear about where the company was wrong, they lose the case but still try to say they did nothing wrong and refuse to apologize. I was impressed this company did.

</comment><comment><USER16> Dr. Eggert is a lecturer at UCLA, and a fantastic one at that (not to mention a huge contributor to various GNU projects). This quarter I have the pleasure of taking his Operating Systems class, and last year I got to take Programming Languages taught by him. I'm really happy about this outcome because people like him should never have to have their brilliance tempered by patent trolls.

<comment><USER17> Long time lurker here. Finally made an account to back up my man Professor Eggert! What an awesome guy and a great teacher. His classes are insanely hard: you cried, you contemplated suicide, then homicide, then you LEARNED... A TON. I wish he would record his lectures and put them up for the world to see.

Also I'm glad to see my membership fees being put to good use. Also, "hello world."

<comment><USER16> Excellently put! I've spent so many nights holed up in the library, staring at a dozen lines of some esoteric programming language and cursing UCLA Engineering, but it all turned out to be incredibly valuable and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So that actually raises a question in my mind, does that make all database that don't include something new created by someone (I'm thinking book database, research databases) as non copyrightable?

I'm thinking of phone books as an example.

<comment><USER19> I think it depends. I'm pretty sure phone books and street directories are copyrightable. You can get copyright on collections of facts, this is how a phone book is copyrightable.

<comment><USER20> Actually, you can't copyright all of a phone book. In Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co. (499 U.S. 340), the Supreme Court said that the "white-pages" part of a phone book had so little application of creativity that it was _not_ copyrightable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does this mean that TZ database is back at elsie.nih.gov?

<comment><USER22> No. The database was already in the process of being transitioned to IANA prior to the lawsuit. The lawsuit just accelerated the transition. It is now at <http://www.iana.org/time-zones>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What's the deal with these "covenants not to sue", lately, and how are they different from actual licenses?

My guess is that such covenants would not be binding on third parties who buy the underlying copyright/patent rights, but I don't really know.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hopefully this is true these days: [http://dearrichblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/can-we-republish- sp...](http://dearrichblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/can-we-republish-sports- statistics.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm really glad this has been resolved. Now I just wish there was an easier way to use the database. Have you ever had to code something with timezone awareness..? It's kinda nuts.

<comment><USER26> I've had to do that in Java and found the API perfectly usable, more so with Joda Time. That may be different for your platform. But what's really nuts is the domain itself, like most where history and politics are involved.</comment></comment>


How POODLE Happened - <AUTHOR> https://www.dfranke.us/posts/2014-10-14-how-poodle-happened.html

<comment><USER2> If I disable everything except TLS 1.2 in nginx, how much breakage should I expect? Has anyone tried?

The latest stable Fx and Chrome, including mobile, will still work, right? What about various web services like rss readers or the google bot?

<comment><USER3> I wish there was an easy way to log what version of SSL/TLS client used and with what ciphers for all mainstream web servers. Then you could just run a script on it and see how many would break. Could be useful for other things too.

<comment><USER4> %sslc in haproxy I think

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really great explanation, as I asked there I don't see how it can be used if we don't know how long the padding is.

One idea would be to try to change the ciphertext so it would produce a entire padding block (and then it would be easy to test if it is indeed an entire block of padding just be tampering it without modifying the last byte and it would still be accepted).

I guess someone here could answer my question?

<comment><USER6> One of the requirements for the attack is partial plaintext control. This is feasible if you're running malicious JavaScript in the user's browser.

So what you do is generate an HTTP request that, taken together with the SSL MAC, will align on a block boundary. Then you're guaranteed to have one full block of padding.

It might sound difficult to pull this off with multiple unknowns (other cookies, user agent string, etc.), but in practice it would be easy. You could make sure things line up correctly just by incrementing your packet length by one byte at a time until you see the record size jump by a block.</comment></comment>


Today I was unable to take a picture in a photo kiosk - louis-paul https://twitter.com/DrPragyaAgarwal/status/1209175998090088448 <comment><AUTHOR> People tend to think of this as horrible discriminating decisions made by some horrible people, but most likely it is a very cheap machine developed by an intern who had 3 days to make something work...

<comment><USER2> Trivially fixable even in that fairly inexcusable case: add an override button.

"by overriding you accept that this photo may ultimately be rejected for passport use."

<comment><USER3> There is an option to override, it's just not visible in the picture.

The booth is asking the user to "touch an option" but only 1 option is visible, the option to retake the photo has a "attempts remaining" counter and that the company logo is in the middle of the photo preview (the photo preview is in the middle of two options, which will make the company logo centred on the screen).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw a great talk at a conference about this by a woman from the University of Florida. I am sorry I don't remember her name or the conference. But this is a classic symptom of lack of diversity of developers (or test subjects). It's like the sinks that don't activate with dark hands (one of her examples). It's another reason we need to focus on developing underrepresented talent.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why does a photo kiosk enforce passport photo requirements?

<comment><USER6> Because it is a photo kiosk for taking passport photos.

<comment><USER5> That doesn't clarify much. Is this some kind of official, government- sanctioned kiosk, whose approval of a photo carries some sort of final authority, and it doesn't just pass the photo on to the passport office?

Because otherwise, it would work just fine without this enforcement functionality.

<comment><USER7> Submitting a bad photo with your passport application can really suck. It delays things a lot and potentially even costs you a submission fee.

The point of passport photo services is to mimic (or try to) the official government photo reviewers criteria. That's the value it provides. Learning that you will be rejected quickly rather than slowly.

<comment><USER5> Merely informing you of a bad photo would provide the same value. No need for enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Probably easier to send the photo off to mechanical Turk if it's not a perfect match.

</comment><comment><USER9> i guess it's trendy to assume the worst, but my optimistic take is that "the machine is broken, use a different machine". maybe because encountering broken machines in public use is pretty much a daily experience for me.

the company that produces the software or the box will either notice the issue and fix it. or not and be punished by the market.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well, she does look smiling to me in the picture she posted...

</comment><comment><USER11> Unlike the title this is for a passport photo.

You can't smile in a passport photo.

If you compare her lips to recommended passport photos she is more smiling.

If you look at the 2nd happy looking woman here, you can see her lips are not actually in a smile as much as the twitter pic - [https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply- for-...](https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-a- visa/tools-and-information/acceptable-photos)

Twitter pic has a dour expression but AI isn't fooled, it looks at lips.

Humans might be fooled and let the photo through though.

Would need more evidence. The open mouth, not sure, stop smiling it might disappear, it could be a follow on assumption.

<comment><USER12> We don't need more evidence. The person in the picture is not smiling and their mouth is not open.

The picture meets every criteria listed on the website you linked. It's totally fine.

<comment><USER10> > _We don't need more evidence. The person in the picture is not smiling and > their mouth is not open._

Well, she looks 100% like she is smiling to me. Her mouth is indeed not open, though, so I'll give you that.

Even if that's her facial structure, and she was consciously not smiling, she does appear to be smiling.</comment></comment></comment>


Want to be funny? Tell it, don't read it - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@edward_18933/want-to-be-funny-tell-it-dont-read-it-a8270be2bba2 <comment><USER2> would like to add one more point, you can actually improvise your "flow" by practicing Journaling. Being yourself will also help.</comment>


The Future of Science - <AUTHOR> http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/the-future-of-science-2/

<comment><AUTHOR> The author of this is an HN user. I hope his book on 'The Future of Science' is coming along well.</comment>