Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking Is Healthy - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/truth-wont-admit-drinking-healthy-87891/

<comment><USER2> [http://www.meltingmama.net/files/noamountofalcoholissafe.pdf](http://www.meltingmama.net/files/noamountofalcoholissafe.pdf)

"When it comes to cancer, no amount of alcohol is safe."

"The evidence showing lower risks for diabetes mellitus, stroke, heart failure, and total mortality stand in stark contrast to the harms associated with excessive alcohol consumption."

"The evidence for the harmful effects of alcohol is stronger than the evidence for its beneficial effects."

And finally:

"Other than celebrity drunk-driving stories, we rarely see headlines about the harm caused by alcohol. Dr. Rehm comments, 'I do not know why a beneficial link would be more important than a detrimental link, if the beneficial link overall is about one tenth of the detrimental link. We have counted how many studies are reported in the press, and there are many more reports on the beneficial link than on the detrimental link between alcohol and health.' "

It would seem our news media has the opposite problem from admitting drinking is healthy.

<comment><USER3> [https://d1435t697bgi2o.cloudfront.net/wp- content/uploads/201...](https://d1435t697bgi2o.cloudfront.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/08/nejm-alcohol.jpg)

Yes, alcohol benefits some things and hurts some others - that is why in the chart above the line for "all causes" (of death) does not exactly mimic the one for "all cardiovascular diseases". But see where the low point of the "all causes" line is.

To paraphrase: when it comes to teetotaling, no amount of cancer studies make it safe.

<comment><USER2> I've seen information like that (and that chart is fascinating, BTW, if for no other reason than how flat the line is for women). And as a non-drinker with several risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, I've even brought it up with doctors -- I've asked a cardiologist and two GPs if I should consider adding it for that reason.

The response has been lukewarm at best: basically, they've all said that it probably wouldn't hurt, but that the benefits were marginal, may present other risks, and it would be secondary to losing weight, getting regular exercise, and watching dietary risk factors (or, for that matter, taking statins, which so far I've decided against).

Still, it's about time for my yearly visit with the cardiologist and a GP, perhaps I should take the chart with me on my next visit.

(OTOH, the urologist I've been seeing advises me to avoid alcohol, so...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I also heard of a couple of studies that indicate that moderate drinking is slightly beneficial, this quote is just rubbish:

 _For example, despite being heavily out-drunk by the English, we have almost exactly twice their levels of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease._

...of course this is because Americans drink less and not because they like they burgers extra large.

<comment><USER5> Maybe drinking less also has an effect of how you like your burgers? E.g english-men who drink don't go out slurping colas and downing burgers...

<comment><USER6> Really?...if go out drinking there is nothing more I crave than salty greasy foods and even sugary foods towards the end of the night. Same the next the day.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but "salty greasy foods" after a drinking session != "salty greasy foods" all day long...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of the stuff the article claims sounds a bit fishy: "The more alcohol a society consumes, the fewer alcohol-related problems and alcohol-related deaths (including cirrhosis) it has."

That said, there have been quite a few studies arguing that light to moderate drinking is healthier than abstinence (e.g., less cognitive decline [2], increased longevity [1, 3], etc). For the most part it seems like a U-shaped curve, since heavy drinkers lose these benefits. A comprehensive list of studies that claim benefits to health was put together by Prof. David Hanson of SUNY Potsdam, and it can be found here: [http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/AlcoholAndHealth.html#.U_pwJ...](http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/AlcoholAndHealth.html#.U_pwJvlSYpp)

In the Holahan et al. study [1], they found that moderate drinking was the best for longevity after studying mortality rates among 1,824 people. From their results: "Controlling only for age and gender, compared to moderate drinkers, abstainers had a more than 2 times increased mortality risk, heavy drinkers had 70% increased risk, and light drinkers had 23% increased risk. A model controlling for former problem drinking status, existing health problems, and key sociodemographic and social-behavioral factors, as well as for age and gender, substantially reduced the mortality effect for abstainers compared to moderate drinkers. However, even after adjusting for all covariates, abstainers and heavy drinkers continued to show increased mortality risks of 51 and 45%, respectively, compared to moderate drinkers."

[1] [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2010....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2010.01286.x/abstract)

[2] [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713114506.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713114506.htm)

[3] [http://singularityhub.com/2010/09/02/heavy-drinkers- outlive-...](http://singularityhub.com/2010/09/02/heavy-drinkers-outlive-non- drinkers-longevity-never-tasted-so-good/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't help but think the complete opposite when it comes to people admitting something about alcohol...that it's just plain bad for your body. It's a toxin.

People will gravitate and cling to any evidence that alcohol has a health benefit so they won't feel so bad about drinking.

</comment><comment><USER8> Please consider that alcohol induced behavior may destroy even the lives of people around the consumer.

That it is addictive.

That abstinence can literally kill an addict.

That many people live crippled lives or have their lives cut short after consuming it frequently (and abusing it regularly) for decades.

That hangovers are a living hell.

That camels were the shit back in the day: [https://www.google.es/search?q=doctors+recommend+camel&rlz=1...](https://www.google.es/search?q=doctors+recommend+camel&rlz=1C1GGGE_es&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=E5n7U8i9MMnjaPG8gSg&ved=0CCIQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=634)

TL;DR: Alcohol is a drug. Drink responsibly.

</comment><comment><USER9> Health benefits/risks aside, not drinking is a social handicap. I wonder if there's a knock-on effect of that on your life expectancy.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is the evidence just a correlation?

<comment><USER5> Well, they address those things in TFA:

First, let's address some typical objections to these findings. Of course, abstainers may not drink because they are already ill. Thus the meta-analysis relied on studies that eliminated subjects who are abstaining due to illness, or else contrast drinkers with lifetime abstainers. Additionally, objectors note, drinkers showing such longevity may be wine-sniffling, upper-middle- class professionals (virtually no study has ever found that the type of alcohol consumed impacts these results), people who exercise, eat right, and don't smoke. To counter this argument, researchers from the prestigious Harvard Health Professionals Study published a paper which found that even men with four healthy life factors (diet, weight, non-smoking, exercise) had one- third to one-half the risk of suffering a heart attack if they had one to two drinks daily, relative to comparable men in each category who abstained.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let me just again point out the most ridiculous statement in the article:

 _The more alcohol a society consumes, the fewer alcohol-related problems and alcohol-related deaths (including cirrhosis) it has, since these societies, such as those in Southern Europe, integrate drinking with social life. And alcohol conveys health benefits._

My response: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8174613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8174613)

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't even.. Not sure if stupid or trolling.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a joke right?</comment>


Ask HN: What timezone does ISS use? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Do they use UTC up there?

</comment><comment><USER2> Probably UTC. But with a minor note: Time dilation applies.

[http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp7/luletters/lu_l...](http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp7/luletters/lu_letter13.html)</comment>


Joe Biden: The Best Person to Govern Post-Trump America - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dialogue-and-discourse/joe-biden-the-best-person-to-govern-post-trump-america-61e0e4d9504f <comment><USER2> I hope that the people who are pinning their hopes and donating money to Biden's campaign watch him on TV a bit and see his stump speech and how he interacts with reporters.

I hate to say it, but he seems to be suffering from Dementia. In his stump speech he rambles on for a few minutes about how he likes firefighters, oh really, you wouldn't believe it, but they saved my life... and oh yeah, they came with the jaws of life and they got my son and daughter of a wreck. Firefighters! Believe it or not, my house was burning down and they came and put the fire out...

When he talks to the press it is even worse.</comment>


Survival Tips for Women in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://patricia.no/2018/09/06/survival_tips_for_women_in_tech.html <comment><USER2> That a post like this even exists saddens me.

Maybe it's easier to accomplish this outside the Valley, but despite being a woman engineer I've never had to explicitly choose any of these positions.

Why not? Because I've always worked places where I was taken seriously and treated professionally. It is possible (and at least in NYC, not at all difficult) to find and choose workplaces and teams with high standards of workplace professionalism. Where people know better than to suggest team building in a sauna.

It also is a good idea to have an emergency fund that will allow you to say "fuck this" and walk out of any job where they lack that professionalism, but in 15-ish years I've yet to sign on to such an environment in the first place.

That such toxic environments seem to be so prevalent in SV is infuriating in part because it's so clear that it doesn't have to be that way.

<comment><USER3> Consider the possibility that these "toxic environments" are in fact not the norm, but the exception, _especially_ in Silicon Valley in 2018. The person who wrote this blog post has never even worked in the US.

<comment><USER4> I think that a lot of people who have not directly experienced this sexism believe this, that it is the exception and not the norm.

Even as a guy, I have personally witnessed that it is the norm, and that most organizations that have managed to avoid being sexist by default are very special indeed.

There is some bias that makes people (men) want to believe that "it can't possibly that bad, or if it is, it can't possibly be that common". Be aware of this bias.

<comment><USER5> Whether this is the norm for a large population of employers is a statistical question that you cannot "personally witness" even in principle. We desperately need a better way than anecdata to look at this.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it matters whether or not this is "the norm"; what matters, to the large extent, is whether or not these problems are common enough that people write these articles and that people uovote them. "The norm" isn't some magical threshold where if it's below a percentage of environments it doesn't matter - how much effort we should put into fixing these problems is more-or- less directly proportional to how bad they are as measured by how much complaining we see about them.

Almost all of these pieces of advice function for anyone, and those specifically about women can be translated for any trait "X" \- minority group or even something-common-but-not-here. I've gotten typecast because I like videogames - Freaking _everyone_ likes videogames.

<comment><USER5> > how bad they are as measured by how much complaining we see about them. > > common enough that ... people uovote them.

But you must have noticed that social media feeds on outrage? People amplify the extent of things they are shocked by, by sharing and upvoting. Looking at the amount of noise generated in media/social-media would be a very poor way of measuring the true extent of anything, but especially of something so politicized as harassment of women.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you remove gendered language, this is good advice for quite literally everyone.

<comment><USER8> Yep, point for point, you should probably be following this as a dude as well. The one I think is somewhat unique to these types of lists is the enthusiasm one. It's easy to push off hostile people, but it can throw you when someone seems a little too interested in you. Stay on the defensive, odds are they want you to start doing something that's technically their responsibility.

<comment><USER9> There's a little wisdom in that point for "allies" as well: don't be an ally because you expect recognition or something else in return -- do it because that's what you believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a bit scared about this one:

      14) Introduce Rules for Communication, like praise in public, criticize in private

This devolves very quickly into not being able to point at problems.

To be clear: I agree with talking about the problem and not the person. But,is it a good idea to push rules on others group before any consensus there is a problem? Especially as new person in an existing group? Especially as first women, comfirming the stereotype women care more about social than technical aspects.

This tip might be a reasonable idea to try in specific situations, but stated as is, I don't think can agree. Maybe it's just the wording, though.

<comment><USER11> As a man/person I still wholeheartedly agree here. Ultimately it comes down to recognizing exactly what your end goal is in choosing one route over another. At best someone will ignore public criticizing and start thinking of the criticizer as a jerk, a perfectionist, a "nagger", or just annoying. At worst they take it personally, start avoiding work that might lead to public shaming, and start fearing parts of their work day.

Engineering is stressful enough. No need to drive people away faster than necessary. Private criticizing can be delivered directly to offending person, especially if you're a team lead or manager, or it can be delivered to your manager. If it's significant enough to result in actionable items then the situation will be handled one way or another. Meanwhile if the person is capable of resolving the issue after your private criticizing they'll often respect your decision to keep things professional. Heck, sometimes there's an entire bag of worms under the surface like serious family problems they're going through outside of work at that same time that explains their behavior, something you almost certainly wouldn't find out with public criticizing.

I've seen some significant turn arounds from previous team members after some pointed private talks. Alternatively, I've seen people dig in their heals and become a problem team member after improperly timed public shamings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Try to convince yourself when you begin to doubt yourself: "It's not me, > it's them"?

Doesn't this just put you in your own bubble? Can all criticism be so easily dismissed?

<comment><USER13> This always seemed like one of the biggest tangible advantages of being a white dude. When someone criticizes me or shits on my idea, it never even crosses my mind that it might be because of my race or gender.

<comment><USER14> Try living in a country like Japan for a while and you may have the experience of having your idea shit on or ignored because of your race.

It's just a majority/minority thing.

As a caveat, it is still a pretty privileged position to be a white person, even in Japan. I think non-white foreigners have a much harder time there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes, don't be afraid to quit.

I've left companies for some of these situations/items and I'm financially better off.

</comment><comment><USER16> This reads more like a beginner's guide to office politics.

</comment><comment><USER17> Much of this is very good advice for people working in tech. It's interesting that it arises from survival tips for women in tech (more on that in a moment).

"Document your work" is very, very important. And be very careful about how documenting your work can go sideways. For instance, I once wrote extensive documentation for a wiki. The documentation was moved during a reasonable re- org of the wiki, but the new "bye-line" was now the person who restructured the wiki. I don't think there was anything insidious going on there, but it can happen. Another thing is when a GitHub repository is moved, or a new team is involved. Sometimes it makes sense to just create a new repo from scratch, but when it happens, your name and history may be removed from your code. I think a lot of this may simply be due to the immaturity of our field (literally and figuratively). Even if it isn't sinister, in most publishing, it's a big deal to take a writer's name off a piece and replace it with whoever copy and pasted the piece to a new location. Unfortunately, this does happen with code and documentation quite often. It's also wise to document in multiple places - write up a blog post, do an in office presentation with slides, speak at a conference if you can. All this is very good advice.

It is inconceivable to me that an actual company event would take place at a strip club, and events that would require dressing in a bathing suite seem unlikely. A sauna? Woah. This is a thing? (NOTE: I'm kinda old for tech).

Well... I suppose river rafting is a possibility. I'm in my late 40s, and I spent my earlier years in large boring corps or universities. When a startup shows a large group photo of a group of 20 somethings on a weekend hiking trip, I get it, it means older people who coach their kid's baseball team on the weekend should probably look for a job elsewhere. I've yet to see a big picture of them all in the sauna, though. Yikes.

There's a lot of good general info here. But on to the interesting thing about women in tech I mentioned above. It's possible to see the problems afflicting women in tech as specifically afflicting women - that it's an bro-tastic place for men, but crappy for women. Another way to see it is that the problems women experience shine a particularly bright light on what is so horrible about this industry.

I think a big part of the problem is that there is a billion dollar industry around convincing young people that tech is a wonderful career and the only problem is that there's a shortage of people who realize how wonderful it is and want to become software developers in Silicon Valley. The reality is that there's something very rotten in tech. I certainly don't think it's a paradise for men, by a long shot, but I also don't have any real trouble believing that what's already unpleasant enough for the gander is particularly crap-tastic for the goose.

<comment><USER18> There's a credibility you gain with experience that tends not to be afforded is generously to women. You're right that documenting your work is critical for new devs too. A man with seniority can claim credit and not be doubted. A man without seniority, or a woman at many companies, doesn't have that luxury.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> #1 is huge, I've seen way too many women try to be one of the guys and do things like tag along to awful events like lunch at the strip club or hooters because they want to seem 'fun'. Just a disaster of a strategy.

I mean if you're a woman who wants to go to hooters then by all means go to hooters, but be who you are not one of the guys.

#3 is not always true, I've worked at some companies where HR actually has power and is an ally of employees, but yeah in the majority of companies they are effectively rubber stamps for whatever the CEO says regardless of ethics or legality. In those organizations just know that HR is your enemy, not a resource.</comment>


Ask HN: How'd you deal with a client who insists to pay you less than decided? - <AUTHOR>

I confess my mistake, I should have had a written contract signed by both parties before the training had begun. It was a basic JEE training with Spring+Hibernate stack and I created a short course outline which I estimated to take 15-20 hours depending upon the how quickly audience would learn different concepts. One of the company's technical manager said that I can add more things into the outline if I find necessary. After every session, I would email company seniors with number of hours consumed. Finally we ended up consuming 22.75 hours. When I went to the finance officer for paycheck, he said I was supposed to take 15-16 hours but I took a lot more than that. His tone was as if I have tricked him into paying more and he was now worried how he would justify the case to his seniors.<p>What would you do if you were in this position? <comment><USER2> Watch F*ck you pay me: <http://vimeo.com/22053820> and never let this happen again.

The only thing you can really do now is talk to them and try to get them to pay you, but you have no real leverage.

Consider yourself lucky, freelancers get burned and not paid for a month or more of work all too frequently. Protect yourself in the future with a solid contract.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, this is an awesome video, I wish I had seen it before the training began. I really liked the ideas of "Kill fee", writing a new contract when original requirements change and "discussing things out over a cup of coffee because we both wanted same thing but had different approach toward it". Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds to me like you have a written contract, your email thread. You submitted your hours, they acknowledge them (I assume). Did they acknowledge your rate? You have a written contract, no?

<comment><AUTHOR> If we can count emails, yes there are a few things documented, my daily hours at top of the list. Yes they did acknowledge the rate, but unfortunately it was only verbal. As I mentioned in my question, there was no written contract.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since you have no written contract, you can only try and negotiate whatever you can at this point. Think about the time it will take to negotiate vs the pay for those extra 6 hours or so. There will be a point when it will not be worth it and you just need to cut your losses and move on.

My advice: cut your losses and move on asap. You have certainly learnt a lesson the hard way which is always effective. You will never (hopefully) get into this situation because you know better now. You are wiser now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, no point in negotiating 10 hours for a loss of 6 hours. Thanks codegeek!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Take whatever you can take and fast.

2\. Do something (if it's not too late) so client will have to come back to you for more technical help.

3\. After clearing check - inform your client that you're now working on a retainer-only basis (like lawyers do).

4\. When client requests your help - trigger "retainer required for further assistance" reply.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for advice, gesman. "Retainer" was a new term for me and I found this link helpful to learn bit about it: [http://www.contractorcalculator.co.uk/charging_clients_retai...](http://www.contractorcalculator.co.uk/charging_clients_retainer_how_they_work.aspx)

<comment><USER5> Alternatively - if you see client would likely need more of your help - maintain good connection without negative sparkles, but for any further gigs request 100% of your fee upfront. I did it a few times with unruly clients. When I receive 100% check - i deposit it but do not use money whatsoever until project is fully implemented to keep myself disciplined too :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It sounds like you've already done it: you learned a lesson, and only lost five to seven hours pay. Bargain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for suggestion, a3n. I had a wild thought that I would either take all money or none of it and hit them morally, but after talking to a couple of people, I feel real world has its own mechanics and bargaining is an essential part of it.

<comment><USER4> "or none of it and hit them morally"

Please don't do this ever. There is no such thing as hitting them morally. If they are not paying you for extra 6 hours, they don't care about morality anyway. Value your work and get paid.

<comment><USER7> Also, do you think they would have more work for you ?

If yes, then just take whatever they give you and then don't bargain for that 6-7 hours. If they think you are easily manipulable, you might get more work from them. Take the work and you could be in a better bargaining position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Talk to the people who approved the hours and ask them to call the finance officer to get you paid.</comment>


Ranked: The World's Top Worst Passwords - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/12/14/ranked-the-worlds-100-worst-passwords#26ba26e669b4 <comment><USER2> once again the stupidity of the people shown in lack of cybersecurity knowledge, cheers to all the Karens of the Internet!</comment>


UK Prime Minister reportedly authorized Guardian hard drive destruction - <AUTHOR> http://picktoread.com/uk-prime-minister-david-cameron-reportedly-authorized-guardian-hard-drive-destruction/ <comment><USER2> "you're using an outdated browser" I get on IE10/WP8 and the header.

What happened to web pages actually shifting fucking content rather than pissing on people because they're not a member of the webkit club. Welcome to 2003 again people.</comment>


Tollbooth: HTTP rate limiter middleware in Go - <AUTHOR> http://didipkerabat.com/posts/1432264032306462173-tollbooth-http-rate-limiter-middleware-in-go.html <comment><USER2> Related: this thread mentions a bunch of things a rate limit package has to consider: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/golang- nuts/rate$...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/golang- nuts/rate$20limiter/golang-nuts/LBzvaXkH3QE/7sqCFlqFy6sJ)

(I thought rate limiters were very simple timers)

</comment><comment><USER3> If interested, I wrote a different type of rate limiter in my spare time for my use case.

[http://badactor.org](http://badactor.org)

<comment><USER4> I really like your simple splash demo. Good work, I might even check out your code.

<comment><USER3> The code is solid. I gauge this by the simple fact that when I review the project, I don't absolutely hate it ;-)

I need to circle back around as there are some features I'd like to add. PRs are welcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was writing an netfilter/iptables rate limiter and a nginx rate limiter (both able to handle quite a lot of requests) but all the system admins I talked to shamed me for trying to rate limit. They raised all kinds of points about blocking access to large companies or small countries and it not being effective for DDoS anyway. Any thoughts on this?

<comment><USER5> A bandwidth rate limiter is indeed of dubious utility. There's a lot of ways that can go wrong, and there's a lot of ways it can fail to do what the user expected anyhow, and there's a lot of ways it can do both.

But there's a lot of things that can be sensibly rate limited, such as logins attempts to a given account. Now that has its own considerations, too, if pushed to the limit... you'd prefer that an attacker can't lock down your service just by spuriously trying to log in to all your accounts 5 times every 5 minutes or something. But loud downtime (which you can then react to) may be preferable to getting your users silently hacked.

I definitely agree that they are less useful than they look at first glance, a great deal more complicated than you'd like, and more subtle than you'd think. But they can still be a useful tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's built around github.com/juju/ratelimit

</comment><comment><USER7> It looks to me like the map of rate buckets will grow unbounded and never be cleaned up?

<comment><USER8> Looks to be the case based on the config. I'm suprised storage wasn't abstracted to accommodate redis or the like which is essential in a load balanced scenario.

The API doesn't seem quite idiomatic either, I'd expect to create a struct containing options and a function that closes over the http.Handler interface e.g. func(l *Limiter) Limit(next http.Handler) http.Handler or a function that takes options and a next http.Handler that creates a struct implementing http.Handler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://github.com/etcinit/speedbump](https://github.com/etcinit/speedbump) is a Redis backed rate limiter that we're currently evaluating for our app.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is neat. What's the best way to do rate limiting in from of Apache for wordpress/drupal sites these days? everytime I go looking for something new I'm dissapointed.

<comment><USER11> You could use the OP's project and point everything that makes it through the limiter at Apache with a reverse proxy [http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/httputil/#ReverseProxy](http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/httputil/#ReverseProxy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Serious question: why would you not use HAProxy, nginx or similar software which arguably are more battle tested in this domain?

<comment><USER13> For general rate limiting, yes HAProxy or Nginx make more sense.

Having different rate limits for different endpoints becomes unmanageable in HAProxy/Nginx; and having different rate limits say across different plans or users is all but impossible.</comment></comment>


Room Temperature Magnetic Refrigeration [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ameslab.gov/files/MagFridge_Foundation.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Room Temperature Magnetic Refrigeration [pdf] [http://www.ameslab.gov/files/MagFridge_Foundation.pdf](http://www.ameslab.gov/files/MagFridge_Foundation.pdf)

A friend and I stumbled on to this last night. I've never heard about this effect before and thought it was interesting.

From the PDF:

        While Gschneidner and Pecharsky's prototype was a landmark event in
        the field of magnetic refrigeration, it would likely remain nothing more than a
        curiosity were it not for the fact that the team's device is more energy efficient
        and environmentally friendly than virtually any conventional refrigerator on
        the market today. Because the relatively inexpensive permanent magnet
        handles the cooling without the need for additional energy input, electricity
        is only needed to turn the wheel and circulate the streams of water. For its
        part, water, even when combined with an environmentally friendly antifreeze, is
        more benign than the chemical coolants presently in use.

And from one of the researchers last year, found at the bottom of [https://www.external.ameslab.gov/news/inquiry/2012-2-karl- gs...](https://www.external.ameslab.gov/news/inquiry/2012-2-karl-gschneidner)

        Gschneidner was instrumental in development of refrigerators that
        harnessed this phenomenon in place of traditional gas-compression-driven
        cooling.

        "The biggest stumbling block we now face is coming up with a GMCE
        material that doesn't progressively break down into smaller pieces over
        the billions of magnetization/demagnetization cycles required for a
        15-20-year appliance life," he says. "We also need to reduce the time
        dependence of the transformation."

        Based on the current pace of research and the growing number of working
        prototypes around the world, Gschneidner expects magnetic refrigeration
        to become commercially viable by 2016 or so, a fruition he plans to
        witness.

More: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_refrigeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_refrigeration)</comment>


The Mississippi is dying, and I want to record it. - <AUTHOR>

Humans don't do nice things to the environment. Before we populated the Midwest, you could actually catch fish and eat them out of the Mississippi river. Now you can maybe eat one a year due to the Mercury in the water. We neglect the river, we destroy it, and we treat it like a toilet, not nice like the faucet it could be.
I just graduated from college, I don't have a job (by choice). I want to do something awesome. I want to ride a boat from the start of the Mississippi (Lake Itasca) down to Lock and Dam #1 (the first large amount of human control exerted over the river, and conveniently located near my house). I want to take water samples the whole way down (hopefully with some kind of real time chemical sensing equipment). I want to collect this data, put it online (raw data), and build a visualizer for it overlaying Google maps or something. I'll put the raw data up so you can do something cooler with it.
I would like this project to spark interest in other people to take care of their water sources, I want other people around the world to take on similar projects. I want people to realize that the environment is not an unmovable object, but humans may be an unstoppable force until we go too far. <comment><USER2> The _human_ environment is a lot better today than it ever was before. That era that you could catch and eat fish out of the river? It's the same era where medicine was primitive (no antibiotics, no anesthetics, no chemotherapy), food was comparatively scarce (and most of the population toiled to produce it), etc. Everything was much harder to do, and life was generally shorter on top of all that.

You say "before we populated the Midwest, you could actually catch fish..."

But that presupposes that I exist in the first place. If you somehow repealed the industrial revolution, I and millions of other people would not exist. Without modern industry to transform it, the natural environment could not sustain the majority of people alive today. (So there might be lots of fish, but not many humans to catch and enjoy them.) Nature as you hold it does not represent any kind of ideal, because under that view, I (and nearly everything I hold dear), do not exist.</comment>


Dear HN: Stop complaining about the "Unknown or expired link" issue - <AUTHOR>

Search for it. It's been an issue for 5 years. Your request to fix it will not be answered. Just stop asking. <comment><USER2> The location of the search form here on HN in relation to other special- content links (e.g., new, threads, comments) is another usability problem with HN. So too is the placement of the link to the user guidelines, down low (and NOT on every HN page displayed to users) where it is hard to see.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dear Europe/America: Stop complaining about the "Great Recession" issue

Search for it. It's been an issue for 5 years. Your request to fix it will not be answered. Just stop asking.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wasn't it fixed for a while up until a month or so ago though? Started using "page" in the query string to give us second and third pages?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe? It's still one of the more popular topics on HN though so it couldn't have been fixed very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every day a new user will join and not have read 5 years of back history on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Large numbers of people are still voting them to the top almost weekly. I don't think we can blame this on new users.</comment></comment>


Meetup.com Alternative in the Works - <AUTHOR> http://melitix.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm a paying Meetup.com customer. I'm not a huge fan of it, but it solves my #1 issue of growing a meetup that I'm interested in without me having to do any outbound marketing, like you would have to do with a FB group.

How much do you like the name melitix? It's kinda hard to remember. I'd be happy to give feedback / other brand ideas. Email in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback. I'm not attached to the name at the moment, just the concept. I'll send you an email.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Am I the only one frustrated with Meetup.com? Melitix is being created out of that frustration. We're building a better, modern meetup platform and looking for feedback from people interested in helping get it right.</comment>


Do we need to move away from Elm? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/81bo14/do_we_need_to_move_away_from_elm/ <comment> shaki-dora Elm's management has left me with the impression of a really smart, well- intentioned hellscape.

Searching for almost any problem I encountered, I'd invariably find two or three Github issues that were exact matches. These were, with impressive consistency, closed about two hours later with a link to some "Meta-Issue for Improvements to our Float handling" or something like it.

That issue, in turn, would usually be closed by some check-in that had nothing to do with my original problem.

Other times, the link to the "Meta-Issue" would get you a 404 because the compiler repository was merged with the documentation repository, and both were subsequently moved to the Elm-Lang project, then renamed to "elmlang". Oh, and feature requests are now part of project elm-future....

Elm is seriously nice to use. But it'd be twice as good if they lost all accounts that have admin privileges for the Github tickets.

<comment><USER2> A major problem that I see with Elm is that it seems, from the outside, to have a bus factor of 1. Looking at the commits for the compiler and other core libraries you only see one name over and over again: Evans.

Evan has created a very streamlined and pleasurable frontend experience, but IMO his tight control of it will lead to it's demise for a variety of reasons:

1\. Something happens to Evan (Hopefully not)

2\. Evan decides the foundations need to be replaced (For example if he moves away from the 'Elm Architecture', it will cause a great rewrite and when great rewrites happen developers evaluate other options. e.g. Angular 1 -> Angular 2.)

3\. Evan gets burnt out

I'm okay with a BDFL, but not a sole maintainer. I think he needs to raise up others to maintain it for it's long-term health.

Note: Creatively I can understand his desire to control the experience. It also make it feel very unique as a programming language where you are guided in a very narrow path in development, but I believe like most creative works they get better with remixing. When the idea is allowed to be evolved, played with, broken and pushed. Yes, most of those changes will be bad but how else can we know besides trying? Those extensions of Elm's ideas are sadly currently happening outside of the Elm ecosystem because of Evans control, which I think will also lead to it's slow demise.

<comment><USER3> I think Evan is too protective of the language to let anybody else maintain it right now, the first step would be for him to realize that he should give it up just a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm on the side of why don't you just let Evan do his thing? Maybe a big part of why Elm is kind of really awesome already is because it's being developed differently. Just let a cool language develop differently this time! It might turn out to be great.

And for people who supposedly have so many lines of an alpha language in production, why are you confused about how Elm is being developed? I'm not even using it, but just an interested follower, and it's been pretty clearly explained how he plans on developing it. A couple highly visible threads here and there (some in quite poor taste too) and you are bound to have been given solid, well thoughout references to why Elm is developed this way. I've seen tons of disclaimers that you are using an alpha language in production at risk. No one was misled.

<comment><USER5> I'm all for letting people do their thing and try different approaches.

But honestly to me it seems the elm community wants to have their cake and eat it too. Of course that is not a trait unique to them.

As somebody not involved with elm I mostly get to hear about the language from the marketing side. And it does get advocated as production ready (or as least as production ready as anthingthing else in the js world, to paraphrase some talk) and the alpha status, it being still a young language and use in production at own risk only ever seems to really come up when there is some push back.

E.g. I can't see any mention of being "alpha" or warnings on the elm website, besides the version number indicating it. Instead it says things like "elm guarantees no run time exceptions in practice", but when I go to Github issues, I find several of them, including intentional and accepted ones.

It seems to be a neat language, but for now I'll just stay away from it and let them do their thing.

edit: grammar, wording.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's an interesting topic. We use Elm at work, but I don't work with frontend development so I don't have a lot of hands-on experience with it.

From following a few of those Reddit thread (the linked one and also [1] about a week ago) it seems like there is some growing concern about the BDFL-type development model that Elm is using.

From a casual user's perspective and as someone with a background in Haskell development, Elm appears sort of unmaintained (PRs being ignored, no new releases/updates/anything in a long time) and unfinished (there are many "Haskell-features" that Elm has no equivalent to (yet), which leads to developers writing a _lot_ of repeating code especially in areas such as JSON (de|en)coding).

None of our work Elm code bases are particularly large (yet), and the developer doing the bulk of our frontend work is also a Haskell person by heart. We'll be staking out PureScript as an alternative, though we'd probably like to keep the idea of the "Elm architecture" alive there, too.

It seems as if the Elm team is currently doing what SPJ once referred to as "avoid success at all costs" in order to ensure that they really nail the features they care about, but they're doing it _after_ already having started a hype- and marketing wave several years prior, which is leaving people stranded in uncertain territory.

We'll see how it works out ...

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/7zk0dy/is_evan_killing...](https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/7zk0dy/is_evan_killing_elms_momentum/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been using Elm on and off for projects for the last couple of years. I find that most of the complaints are just discomfort at how Elm isn't developed the way that many other projects are. It gets in people's heads that they have to trust in Evan's judgment when they don't see a new release popping out every quarter.

I actually like the pace of releases and lack of frequent breaking changes. I'll put some projects aside for 6 months here and there, then come back to them when I have time. Most rapidly-evolving frameworks require you to update all your libraries and fix a ton of breaking changes when you don't touch them for a few months (I'm looking at you, Swift). After I spend all that maintenance time, I often wonder at the value of those changes in the first place. Were they really changes that buy me new flexibility with the language? Or were things just renamed and shuffled around with syntax changes made for no great reason?

When talking to people about using Elm, I discourage them from using it if they're the kind to obsess over the release cycle of a framework that's stable today and that allows them to get quality work done.

<comment><USER8> You like having a fix open in a PR for 2 years and then learning that your work around for the fact that fixes don't get merged or released is going to be also blocked? Because that seems to be what is happening to the person who opened this reddit thread.

<comment><USER9> There are other workarounds; the poster chose that one but didn't have to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really want to love elm. But i dont want to use it for any major project mainly due to its development model. I ca understand the next version taking time. But having no transparency about whats going on and when will it drop doesn't gives me confidence about the project. There are just too many issues and untouched PRs in there.

<comment><USER11> I've been using Elm since 0.16. Development is slow and thoughtful. Perhaps 0.19 will be a disaster, but I doubt it.

In the meantime 0.18 has been a very productive language.

One thing to understand is Evan wants Elm to be a language and not bound to JavaScript. This is the sound motivation behind blocking native packages.

<comment><USER12> Rust is a language, and it can bind to C libraries. Java can import DLLs and shared libraries. Haskell can do this too. All popular languages that can run on a server can spawn a process and communicate via file descriptors.

Useful languages can interop with other languages.

<comment><USER13> Well, Elm does have interop with Javascript through ports. The mechanism is asynchronous which creates an explicit crash boundary at the expense of a mechanism that is more roundabout than just calling `foo x` when you want to wrap a Javascript library's `lib.foo(x)`.

Elm 0.18 and below (not sure what 0.19 is doing, it's not released) has synchronous interop through native modules, but those have been discouraged and documented as "do not use, will change in the future" since the beginning. And you can't easily publish them to the package repository.

To say Elm doesn't interop with Javascript is just wrong.

You may disagree with Elm's stance on its synchronous interop, but you're just disagreeing with trade-offs. Like all trade-offs, just because someone chose different ones than you doesn't mean they were oblivious to them.

<comment><USER12> I'm actually in full agreement that there are many ways to accomplish interop, with a variety of tradeoffs. It is precisely for that reason that I disagree that the statement

'One thing to understand is Evan wants Elm to be a language and not bound to JavaScript.'

is a good explanation (or a 'sound motivation') for the current design decision. Thank you for expanding on the goals of the current design. People less familiar with Elm, such as myself, have learned something about Elm's capabilities and strategies for dealing with interop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems like this is the sort of thing that causes projects to fork. For example, egcs from gcc and IO.is versus node.js. In those cases it apparently worked out well (from an outsider's point of view), but I'm sure everyone would prefer to avoid the drama.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think that the main problem with Elm is that Evan wants to design the perfect system.

This is of course a laudable goal but I think that clashes with the complexity of the real world.

A consequence of this is that if you want to do something Evan spent time designing a solution for you're going to have an awesome experience, he is a great designer, but on the other hand as soon as you try to do something different you're out of luck.

This has the nice effect that what's there is really nice but there is no middle ground and you either get something that is well deisigned and extremely polished or nothing at all.

<comment><USER13> I liken it more to Evan investing "hammock time" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc)) into Elm because he has loftier goals than just another SPA abstraction. Which is a bit different than perfection.

There are just too many cats that can be released from the bag that would be too hard to reverse once out in the ecosystem. Classic example would be allowing native modules into [http://package.elm- lang.org/](http://package.elm-lang.org/).

This puts you in a position of treading cautiously with the long-term in mind while your users may clamor for quick fixes that jeopardize the overall strategy.

So I agree with you. This results in the "something good vs nothing at all" release cycle that you point out, but I think its a more accurate explanation of why that is.

The rest of the issues seem to be related to his limited bandwidth. And I suspect Elm is tied so much to his bandwidth because such fundamental design is still being decided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Like others have mentioned, it seems that elm has done a great job of promoting itself, but lacks the structure to make big changes.

It screams of needing some sort of governance and RFC process ( edit: seems that there is an RFC process [1]) so that all parties could make their case.

The Angular 1 -> 2 transition should be a lesson to most that if you leave your users hanging, they'll go find another ecosystem.

[1] - [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/elm- dev](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/elm-dev)

<comment><USER17> If I recall correctly, Elm grew out of Mr Czaplicki's PhD thesis or project. It seems that he still considers it _his_ project, which is fine for him and his employer but it does it make it hard for those not close to him to see where the language is going and get support.

In a perfect world (according to me), Elm would have 5-10 people in its core team, with at least a few of those tasked with triaging issues and PRs. That wouldn't mean "giving up" control of the language and its future.

<comment><USER16> > Elm would have 5-10 people in its core team, with at least a few of those > tasked with triaging issues and PRs

That would be amazing, but I see this being very similar to Node in its infancy. It took a fork (io.js), and a lot of strong opinions to get Joyent to relinquish its grip on the ecosystem.

I think what the developers who forked Node into io.js showed was competency and care with regards to progress. I'm not sure that could ever happen in the elm ecosystem due to it being somewhat small and niche.

<comment><USER13> If Node was in its infancy when the io.js fork happened, then Elm is downright fetal. I don't think you can compare them.

It seems to me that the extreme BDFL governance of Elm is also its strong point at the expense of being then limited to that bandwidth, it's weak point.

Unfortunately, delegating work does not come for free and a great deal of energy will be burned in people management. Unless you're clairvoyant, it can't be said whether that would be any better for Elm or mire it in an even thicker mud.

Elm has a lot of unknowns that someone has to sit down and make decisions about because it wants to generalize over environments beyond browser-side Javascript. I think that sits at the root of why you can't just delegate out core contributor access.

But trying to do that generalization in the first place is also why Elm has some really interesting potential in the long run than just another SPA abstraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there a licensing reason why someone couldn't just fork Elm and come out with a new less-dictatorial leadership-driven project?

[https://github.com/elm-lang/elm- compiler/blob/master/LICENSE](https://github.com/elm-lang/elm- compiler/blob/master/LICENSE)

Actually, what IS that license? Is it completely unique and not one of the more standard ones?

<comment><USER19> The License looks like a modified MIT, with 2 extra clauses (the binary must produce the copyright, and the author's name can't be used to promote anything else).

Reading through the thread, others don't want to fork because it would split the community of an early language. They don't want to take Elm in a different direction, just bugfixes.

<comment><USER20> It's the three-clause BSD license with the words "the copyright holder" replaced with the author's name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's a fairly direct migration path from Elm to Haskell + reflex, though it's much less user friendly. You'll have no technical limitations tho.

<comment><USER22> There's PureScript to add to the list as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As I've participated in Elm's growth over the years, more and more I feel for the React devs who are pulled in many different directions by impassioned voices on every side. People have really strong feelings about how open source software authors should spend their time.

I read the GitHub issues linked in the OP of that thread. Two are feature requests, and one is a bugfix for a behind-the-scenes problem which apparently has no noticeable symptoms. I understand OP's frustration that these haven't been merged or closed; nobody _wants_ to do workarounds, and everybody wants feedback when they post on GitHub. I'm also personally sympathetic to the idea that Elm core libraries should have more frequent minor releases, which I agree with.

The thing is, I also understand that when open source authors prioritize engaging on GitHub, that implicitly means not prioritizing other things. People think "how hard can it be to write one sentence of feedback as to whether this will get merged?" but that's not how GitHub works socially.

An under-appreciated reality of OSS is that maintainers have two options: engage in a back-and-forth with issue posters until the issue is resolved to the poster's satisfaction, or brace for complaints that you're unresponsive. If authors conclude other priorities are higher than seeing that issue through to its eventual conclusion - however much time that may take up - it's understandable why they wouldn't even begin that conversation in the first place.

(Naturally, those who prioritize responding on GitHub are subject to complaints that ambitious long-term projects are taking _forever_ and perhaps deserve to be labeled vaporware.)

If you have a BDFL, some will say things are moving too slowly because the BDFL doesn't have enough bandwidth. If you have a committee instead, some will say things are moving too slowly because there's too much bureaucracy. Trade flexibility for guarantees? Some will call that stifling. Trade guarantees for flexibility? Some will call that dangerous.

We programmers have every possible combination of preferences, and those whose preferences already align with a given project tend not to bother posting about it online - because they're off happily using the thing that's worked well for them. I think this is why I've found contributing to open source consistently rewarding but frequently exhausting.

For reference, here's what Evan said about the big picture topic here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/73ubxo/an_explanation_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/73ubxo/an_explanation_of_elms_policy_on_native_code/)

<comment><USER6> Some loose thoughts:

A lot of this boils down to figuring out a delegation model that works for Elm.

Does the BDFL of the language really also need to be the only person maintaining core libraries? The only person maintaining project communications?

In this particular case it feels like the Elm team is afraid of "losing control" over the language.

That's often in direct contradiction with the project becoming more popular, so for a while maintainers need to choose between advocating the thing they're building and advancing it in the way Elm is currently being advanced.

Once things like [1] start appearing in the codebase you're basically asking people to fork your project and what happens after that is unknowable ...

[1]: [https://github.com/elm-lang/elm- compiler/blob/d07679322ef5d7...](https://github.com/elm-lang/elm- compiler/blob/d07679322ef5d71de1bd2b987ddc660a85599b87/compiler/src/Elm/Package.hs#L72)

<comment><USER13> I've been using Elm for years now and it's always been openly admitted that core abstractions are still being decided. You can just look at the change log between versions (which are all sub-1.0) to see that.

You have to be okay with that to use it in production. Else you would have used something more stable instead of decided to gamble.

I think Elm is still too early to bike-shed over governance model. And people seem to think Elm is a lot farther along than it really is. Else they wouldn't have the expectations that they do. Or they wouldn't go "I don't have these issues with React."

I think the social issues Elm has are just what it's going to take if Elm wants to arrive at something more compelling that just another language. If there's a continuum with BDFL on one side and design-by-committee on the other, then you're going to have issues no matter where you move the needle.

The upside of the bus-factor-of-1 approach is that you have a visionary in the Hickey hammock. And the unavoidable downside is that you have to deal with the bandwidth of one person which describes a lot of the social issues.

I think that anyone who is uncool with that reality chose the wrong language. And a lot of the criticism that results from that, like this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/7zk0dy/is_evan_killing...](https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/7zk0dy/is_evan_killing_elms_momentum/), starts to reek of the hot air of entitlement, to use Rich Hickey's words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Elm was a nice experiment, but people need to put things in production and be confident they can fully maintain all of their code and dependencies.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have been looking at Elm as an example of how to engineer the ergonomics of a functional language, and how far one can come with a focus on simplicity and consistency. Unfortunately, it also looks like it is becoming an example of the problems of going too far. I don't actually mind Elm's weaknesses as discussed in the Elm Is Wrong essay[0] - these look like an ordinary technical trade-off - but the social consequences of how Elm is managed seem a little more subtle. [0]: [http://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/elm-is- wrong](http://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/elm-is-wrong)

</comment><comment><USER25> Dumb question but I recently was looking at Elm and ReasonML (by Facebook) and don't really know the difference... they seem to try to achieve the same thing no?

<comment><USER26> (Disclaimer: I only have experience with Elm, not ReasonML)

Their goals might align quite a lot (functional programming for the browser; compiling to JS), but Elm seems to me more "pure" than ReasonML, and places extra emphasis on correctness ("no runtime errors").

For example, ReasonML allows you to put JS code inside its source [1]. Which might be great if you want that escape hatch, but might mean that runtime errors are common when working with ReasonML. Elm trades a bit of convenience for the enforced reliability.

[1]: [https://reasonml.github.io/docs/en/interop.html](https://reasonml.github.io/docs/en/interop.html)

<comment><USER27> Yep, this is exactly why we use ReasonML instead of Elm. I want to be able to write inpure code when I need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't get why not making it an option not to install "unsafe" modules

</comment><comment><USER29> I love Elm. We use it in production, though we're not primarily a "web" company and it's used for admin UIs and simple SPAs.

Nothing in Javascript / HTML is very stable--I've hitched my wagon to so many stars that burned out. Everything from XSLT to JQuery to Bootstrap. So the fact that probably, something will replace Elm doesn't bother me.

It works now, it's stable, and it hides most of the crap from me so I can just code. It helps that I've been a "Functional Programmer" since 1980 when I first learned LISP, and that our core products are done in Erlang and F#.

</comment><comment><USER30> I hate duplicate-named projects. Thought for a moment this was about someone discussing upgrading their text-based mail client.

</comment><comment><USER31> I tried Pine for a few months but ultimately changed to mutt. But today I'm using Thunderbird.

</comment><comment><USER32> The most recent release of elm was over a decade ago. If there's anyone left still using it, I'd definitely recommend switching to mutt.

<comment><USER13> People make this joke every single time Elm comes up.

Even if you somehow meant it in earnest, which wouldn't make sense here, it exposes you as someone who couldn't even be bothered to click the OP link.

<comment><USER33> Alternately, it exposes the creator of Elm as someone who should have thought harder about naming, and not chosen the name of a very well known piece of software that predates theirs by a few decades.

<comment><USER18> > that predates theirs by a few decades

Have you seen Evan? He's like 12. (Sarcasm because I'm 45 and now everyone around his age looks like 12.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PCI Express 5.0 Announced with 32GT/S Transfer Rates - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PCIe-5.0-Announced <comment><USER2> It's time for standards to stop setting fixed 'speeds'.

Instead, on powerup, devices should communicate at some base speed, then every millisecond go 10% faster. As soon as communication fails, step the speed back 2 steps and use that speed.

That way we wouldn't need a new standard every time someone invents something slightly faster.

</comment><comment><USER3> Getting close to IBM and NVIDIA's NVLink at 300GB/s!

<comment> j-walker Looks like NVLink is 25GT/s while PCIe 5.0 is 32GT/s (per pair of electrical "wires").

<comment><USER3> On POWER9 NVLink is 300GB/s aggregated in/out.

PCIe 5.0 has a higher transfer rate, but can't aggregate links, so it's limited to 63.01 GB/s (at PCIe 5.0 x16)</comment></comment></comment>


Cobol job market heating up - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/23/43FE-cobol-jobs_1.html

<comment><USER2>
      IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.

       Here is where you put all the stuff that goes without saying.

      ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.

       More stuff that goes without saying but takes a long time to type.
       Or cut and paste.

      DATA DIVISION.

       Don't need no stinkin' schema.
       It all goes here anyway.

      WORKING STORAGE SECTION.

       77 Sunset Strip.

      PROCEDURE DIVISION.

       Here is your logic (if you're still awake).

       (30 pages later...) More logic (if you're still awake).

Programming in COBOL doesn't make your career last longer. It just seems that way.

</comment><comment><USER3> _might not be as sexy as slinging Java_

...

</comment><comment><USER4> Cobol is like assembly language, but without all the fancy add-ons.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please don't tell me he just called XML a language.

<comment><USER6> "eXtensible Markup ___"?

<comment><USER7> C'mon. I like to hire people who speak English, French, XML, or other languages.

Speaking of English, it is not context-free.</comment></comment></comment>


2 Years Later, I Still Think Facebook Overpaid for WhatsApp - <AUTHOR> http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/19/2-years-later-i-still-think-facebook-overpaid-for.aspx <comment> amar-singh Hi,

May be its right that facebook overpaid for whats app. But, at that when facebook paid whatsapp grabed a strong portion of the market. Its became popular in very less time. Now also people are using whatsapp than other chat apps.</comment>


Headerless Train Announcements - <AUTHOR> http://www.windytan.com/2014/06/headerless-train-announcements.html

<comment><USER2> > In an eerily out-of-place sound file, a small child reads out a list of > numbers.

Numbers station[0] recordings perhaps?

0 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station)

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing leftover files from some developer playing around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Also, there is an English recording of most announcements, even though only Finnish and Swedish are usually heard on commuter trains.

Actually, announcements are often (if not always) in all three languages.

</comment><comment><USER5> i would /love/ to do this for the trains here! (ScotRail FWIW.)

<comment><USER6> was just about to post the same comment. where abouts in scotland are you, out of interest? :)</comment></comment>


Credit Card Industry Aims to Profit From Sterling Payers - The New York Times - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/business/19credit.html <comment><USER2> they're probably going to get bitten on this, fairly hard. imo, of course.

if they do this, it'll drive away at least some of those pristine payers who they do get profit from. maybe not huge profit, but it is reliable profit.

and once those guys are gone, it'll look like the subprime market. credit will be being given to people who are less responsible and have fewer means to repay their credit debts. it'll be a cycle of giving them money to use, and then having to lose money to pick up their assets when they don't pay you back.

this is whats happening now anyway, but the companies are making good $ off of the people who do repay in a reasonable time period. once those people leave for greener pastures, the CC companies are going to be stuck with a chewed up field full of manure.</comment>


Hewitt is Right, Ament is Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.zetetic.net/blog/2009/09/02/hewitt-is-right-ament-is-wrong/

<comment><USER2> This argument sets up a false dichotomy. Comparing the internet to the app store and claiming that just because the internet is a free for all, every service that is built on top of it 'should' also be a free for all is simply illogical.

Because the internet is as free as it is, we have the fortune of being able to choose between a heavily curated store - the apple app store, and some competitors who claim they will be more open - e.g. the Android Market.

This is analogous to what happens in the high street. I could rent a retail space, and then allow anyone who wants to come in and set up a table selling any legal goods, or I could rent the same space and carefully choose products that I think my customers will value.

Some people will prefer the trading hall, and others will prefer the department store.

The point is that it's a good thing that Apple can provide this more curated option for those of us who want it, and that others can provide alternatives for those who don't like Apple's approach.

The real tyranny would be if Apple were forced to stop being the gatekeeper for the iPhone - that's when a choice would be lost to us.

For right now, I think Apple has the best model by a long way, even though it's not perfect.

I'm quite prepared to believe that I'll be buying an Android phone in a couple of years if the more open ecosystem turns out to be better at producing useful applications, but I'd like to see that determined empirically - by allowing both approaches to be tested, rather than having the App store torn down or undermined because of ideology.

</comment><comment><USER3> What the author misses is phones present dangers and costs that PCs don't. So his philosophy of "we've gotten by in the past and our PCs never had a review process" doesn't hold up.

In fact, it ignores the fact that a large percentage of the computers out there are part of one botnet or another. On the desktop it isn't that big a hindrance since high speed connections are cheap and unlimited. But if we open cell phones up to the same risk you're going to see serious consequences.

Forget bots pushing spam, forget monstrous phone bills, imagine a cell phone trojan that actually launches calls. It's a lot easier to create an effective DoS attack against phone lines.

There's a reason why even open leaning Google has a review process for their app store.

<comment><USER4> > There's a reason why even open leaning Google has a review process for their > app store.

You're either misinformed or being somewhat disingenuous comparing the Android review process to the App Store one. The Android review process consists of pretty much instantaneously running a piece of sanity check software against the putative application, and then immediately approving or rejecting it.

Yes, Google still has the ability to reverse decisions later, but this is more or less the only part where their "review process" is on par with Apple's. Anyway, you would expect that anyone running an application store would maintain this ability, at the very least to remove abusive or somehow illegal pieces of software.

(I'm not saying that I would never disagree with Google's particular decisions regarding their ability to remove applications. I'm saying that the Android model is pretty much exactly what the article is proposing for the App Store.)

<comment><USER3> Where did I say that Apple's app store process was identical to Google's? Or even close?

The original article quoted a post endorsing the idea of no approval process while saying the person writing that article was right. To me that's an endorsement of no approval process and I was responding to that by saying even Google has some kind of approval process in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really, we're not talking about being the gatekeepers to the iPhone, Apple is the gatekeeper to the App Store, nothing more. It doesn't seem that big of a deal for Apple to continue to review applications for the App Store, but allow another method (short of jailbreaking) to add non-reviewed apps to your phone too.

<comment><USER6> It's a PR and brand management thing. Apple knows that anything heinous or broken on the iPhone reflects poorly on Apple. However Apple tries to wash its hands or disclaim responsibility, the animus attached to bad apps will rub off on Apple. That's reality; it can't be changed by fiat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The bad press about App Store polices play big here, and elsewhere in the tech press, but in the general press? People don't care about a developer's woes unless they themselves are developers. Only a few people care about apps they aren't getting access to due to Apple's policies.

On the other hand, if there were rogue apps out there, that would be nightly news material. Even just the words "rogue apps" should tell you that.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, that's how the internet should work and that's how personal computers should work, for everyone but people like us.

Closed platforms rock. The mythical End User just loves himself a closed platform. It means there's some company out there betting their reputation and their bottom line that no malicious, harmful, or otherwise undesirable software will find its way on their device. And that's a guarantee that sells devices. Look at what the "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality" did for video games, for instance.

The future of development is closed source on a closed platform. That's where customers' attention, and money, will be focused.

</comment><comment><USER9> This article will get upvoted because people hate the app review process, but the logic in the article is flawed, as was Hewitt's. Whatever they may say about the "sandboxing", the iPhone is running native code on a little box that can listen to your phone calls, access your voice mail, and probably log in to your email account. When the little box goes crazy, it can disrupt the GSM network.

<comment><USER10> Apple builds security against those types of attacks into the OS and the SDK. The review process basically adds no additional protection. Holes in the SDK which accidentally expose such features can still be exploited, and those exploits are highly unlikely to be detected by Apple.

<comment><USER9> It's true that the review process won't catch these problems, but the process increases accountability.

I'm not arguing in favor of or against reviewing though. I'm just pointing out the flaw in Hewitt's logic. There's no magic sandbox that will reliably keep an iPhone app away from the dialer. That's in stark contrast with sandbox systems like Java, where the dollar value of a sandbox break is extremely high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> s/Ament/Arment/g</comment>


FTC Alleges T-Mobile Crammed Bogus Charges onto Customers' Phone Bills - <AUTHOR> http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/07/ftc-alleges-t-mobile-crammed-bogus-charges-customers-phone-bills

<comment><USER3> I fail to see how it is T-Mobile's job to decide what services a user "really meant to subscribe to".

If I want horoscopes sent to me each morning and I'm willing to pay $9.99/month, it isn't T-Mobile's job to determine that I should be protected from myself.

That said, their website UI around billing is horrible.

<comment><USER4> It's not just billing that is the problem. These third-party services send the carrier a list of numbers to subscribe, and the carrier simply takes them at their word that those numbers have opted in, without having any idea whether this is actually true.

Technically, the third-party could simply make up a list of random (but valid) numbers, send them to the carrier to subscribe, and the carrier would do it. There is no technical means in place to stop this. The only thing that (in theory) stops it is the carrier noticing the high number of customer complaints and deciding not to do business with the third-party any more - <USER2> clear conflict of interest, since deciding to ignore the problem benefits the carrier financially.

What many of these services do is toe the line, by enticing a customer to give up their phone number for some completely unrelated reason, and bury somewhere in the fine print that they are signing up for a recurring charge on their phone bill. The customer has absolutely no idea that this is happening unless they read through pages of legalese. This way, the charges are technically opt-in, even though no reasonable person would describe it as such.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cramming_(fraud)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cramming_\(fraud\))

The brain-dead simple technical solution for this is for the carrier to check with the customer before adding a charge to the bill. There is no reason not to do this.

Or maybe just get rid of for-pay SMS services altogether. In the age of smartphones they are useless.

<comment><USER5> The UK has a regulator that would go after these companies. Any telco that was seen to be coluding with these dodgy companies (even by just ignoring some complaints) would face heavy duty regulation and large fines.

<comment><USER6> The UK regulator in this area has a reputation for failing to act on complaints and being too close to the industry it's meant to be regulating, as I recall.

Edit: We've had similar problems in the UK for years: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/17489393](http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/17489393) I don't think most of the customers scammed ever saw refunds, and PhonepayPlus (the industry regulator's) fines are basically slaps on the wrist that are far less than the scammers' profits. Don't think there's ever been any equivalent of the FTC lawsuit over here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reaction from T-Mobile USA: [http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news/our-reaction- to-the-ftc-la...](http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news/our-reaction-to-the-ftc- lawsuit.htm)

</comment><comment><USER8> Of course this would happen just as T-Mobile is succeeding in branding itself as actually being reasonable...

I'll be interested to see how they handle PR

<comment><USER9> Is it possible the other carriers are pulling the FTC's strings?

<comment><USER10> Is it not more likely that there have been more complaints regarding T-Mobile because their customers are more apt to notice these things? Squeaky wheels get greased and the people who have signed up for T-Mobile are all holding oil cans. After all, they switched under the assumption that they could get away from hidden charges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Imagine if app developers told apple which customers had downloaded and purchased their apps using only the customers phone number and apple just billed them.

</comment><comment><USER12> Still cheaper than all the other carriers.</comment>


The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/ <comment><USER2> 12th posting this week.</comment>


Rich people can't build social networks - <AUTHOR> https://hua.substack.com/p/rich-people-cant-build-social-networks <comment><USER2> Isn't this is just like a digital version of golf clubs? Who knows, maybe all you need a critical mass of rich and famous on the platform before others join on board to connect and try to do business.

Then again, golf is kinda fun, even though I suck at it, and I barely use social media anymore, so maybe it's a bad comparison.

<comment><USER3> > Then again, golf is kinda fun, even though I suck at it, and I barely use > social media anymore, so maybe it's a bad comparison.

Why? There are tons of people who hate golf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of things that's obvious about the modern social network is that Whatsapp is the model more than facebook . I would even argue with you more so than even Instagram. Whatsapp is the myspace of those tools and Signal and Telegram seem to have different goals. Social networks are going to be smaller and more tightly connected. So I'm completely convinced of that direction. I'm just unsure why if I'm someone with a mailing list 400k people why I'm talking to them and not Patreon? Why am I giving you 40% of my revenue? If I was working a Patreon or Twitter in product I would be really interested because (semi-)federated micro networks with interesting content are their business.

</comment><comment><USER5> Leaving aside the deck and focusing on the business idea, do people really want to have a different social network (column) for every part of their life? And every influencer they follow? A paid social network option might be nice to avoid advertising but paying a subscription to every 'column' I want to follow seems a stretch. FWIW I avoid almost all social media, but know plenty of people who can't live without their InstaFaceTwitReddit fix a few times each day and can't imagine them paying for the privilege.

<comment><USER6> I have upwards of nine chat apps installed. Most adults I know use WhatsApp. My friends from out in China use WeChat. Line for friends in parts of Asia, slack, discord, Quassel (IRC), etc.

In each of these services I have distinct and separate peer groups. The topic is clear, the group is attractive to join, and the desire to remain connected keeps things civil. This is my current situation and likely to be the future for me. It certainly is quieter and more relevant than just about any other type of social interaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Entire pitch deck here [1]

I think the author does protesteth a little much, I mean, surely within his right. But, the project isn't quite so zany.

[1] [https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.technologyreview.com/p/pub/do...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.technologyreview.com/p/pub/docs/COLUMN.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> >> Jake Lodwick: Inventor of the "Like Button"

A true pioneer of our time. Out of millions of web developers who had been building websites for decades beforehand, not one of them had thought to create a button which allowed users to express their appreciation for a particular piece of content in such a succinct way. What an amazing invention.

<comment><USER9> I like this comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the point of slides with very small fonts? What's the point of aesthetically pleasant slides when the UI it's a drawing and looks horrible? But most importantly, what's the point of this product? Quite simply, it will never work.

</comment><comment><USER11> Actually, I think there is something there in selling out your contact lists explicitly rather than just having social media hoover them on each new signup.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is interesting to contrast this overwrought, half-baked, tone-deaf Powerpoint vaporware against a minimalistic and already successful product, Community: [https://www.fastcompany.com/90439032/why-your-favorite- celeb...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90439032/why-your-favorite-celebs-are- ditching-twitter-for-an-app-youve-never-heard-of)

It is a perfect case study in how product ideas can veer in completely opposite directions. On the surface, they both target "awesome celebs" who are accomplished and have a big presence. The core idea is a social network that strips away cruft and is more useful/impactful for famous people.

Ok, let's go through it.

First, the audience. Column doubles down on signing (or anticipates signing) the most influential people with big ideas about saving the world. People who sound impressive. Get 'em all in a room and Davos it up! Community focuses on a key metric, people who have a large following of devoted fans. They narrowed it further for launch, specifically focusing on popular musicians. The difference is in why. Column wants to sound impressive to VCs and to celebs themselves. Let's congratulate ourselves! Community focuses solely on the key metric that their product hinges on. It doesn't need explanation or reasoning, it is straightforward and intrinsic.

As for the product, what is it and why is useful to famous people? Column... well, here's the impressive team. You can mark comments as "truth" or "false" which is more impactful than "like". And most importantly you can chat with other awesome people and feel awesome. Everyone will give you money, not sure why. And maybe there will be a search engine someday where you can Google how to fix climate change which would be cool. Community's product is as simple as possible: direct text messaging between fans and celebs. Why bother even having an app? Community enhances the connection and gets the hell out of the way.

Ok, give me a use case. Why are famous people going to use it? They are super busy, you know.

Column's solution? Everybody has SOME down time. Hey, why not use our app while taking a shit? You can solve climate change with Thiel while waiting for your limo or taking a dump. Community's approach? Celebs control the dialog AND they control the audience. Their magic is in selective controls: Text only the fans in Toledo and let them know about a new concert date or pass them a secret coupon. Or ask everyone in Boston where you should go get a burrito. That gives celebs real marketing power AND provides individual and personal value. And fans are interested because hey, they might get to tell Beyonce where to stop for a burrito while she is in a car to get one. Real connections, real value. Community is an idea that improves the relationship for everyone involved and gets out of the way as much as possible. Column is grasping for reasons to exist and it shows.</comment>


The Colors We Eat: Food color changes the experience of taste - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/the-colors-we-eat

<comment><USER2> _And when a lime-flavored drink was colored orange, nearly half of respondents thought it was flavored orange—none did when it was green._

Wait...no one could tell a drink was lime-flavored when it was green?

<comment><USER3> When it was colored orange, nearly half thought it was flavored orange.

When it was colored green, none did (think it was flavored orange).

So the color alone made people perceive an orange taste in an actually lime- flavored drink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Agree with the drinks part but here in India , fruits such as apples are coated with wax so that apples are shining red , they surely look good and are tasty , but what about wax . Since the day I found I peel apple before eating them

</comment><comment><USER5> My intuition is this is on par with "the sky is blue."

So I read through the article just in case there was something unexpected. Unfortunately there isn't.</comment>