Is Silicon Valley Driving Teachers Out? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/07/silicon-valley-housing-tough-on-teachers/399071/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> SV could find ways to increase teacher salaries beyond what the property tax funding ceiling will allow, but this would require members of the community to recognize - and be motivated to action by - a perceived lack of teacher quality.

But, this won't happen because despite all the noise around 'teacher accountability' we don't yet have a reliable way to measure teacher efficacy. This both prevents the out-and-out firing of substandard teachers (unless they're obviously terrible performers) while also undermining a strong teacher's ability to say "by these measures I am having X impact on student learning and require additional compensation".

You can't make a strong argument for additional compensation if you can't demonstrate your value. Likewise, SV families aren't going to push for additional compensation so long as their teachers are considered 'good enough'.

Not a lot of winning here on the wages front, so increase housing density?</comment>


NASA's Curiosity Rover Just Found Something… - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/11/nasas-curiosity-rover-just-found-something/

<comment><USER2> > Whatever could it be? Confirmation that there was — or still is — water on > the surface of Mars?

For God's sake, couldn't you people learn a little bit about Mars before posting this drivel? Of course there's water on Mars -- easily detected in a frozen state on the surface, and possibly (likely) in liquid state at the pressures and temperatures below the surface.

There's no liquid water on the surface for more than a few seconds, enough time for the water to "boil" away (technically "sublimate") because of the very low surface pressures. And there's plenty of water ice on the surface.

Water is not an issue, therefore it isn't the issue being speculated about. The reason? It's not a discovery -- we already know there's water on Mars. How hard is it to discover this? Try Googling for "water on Mars":

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

It's much more likely that the rover has detected organic molecules in the samples processed so far, in its rather sophisticated mobile laboratory. And the caution being exercised is perfectly understandable.

The next time you try to write something about Mars, please -- hire someone who knows the topic.</comment>


Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer? - <AUTHOR>

Switching to T-mobile soon and want to take advantage of their excellent data plan, I also have need of a "rough" GPS device although a fully functioning one is a plus. I know my way around enough that just having google maps 'should' be enough.
Anyway, my choices are any smartphone that is unlocked and GSM. My primary contenders are
Palm Treo, for the price factor since I can get one for under $200 unlocked.
Apple iPhone, for under $500, although the totalitarianism is a serious turn-off.
Any Good Windows Mobile Phone?
Nokia N95, heard it was good, but the reports of cheap construction and laggy interface are a huge turn-off for me. I hate laggy interfaces. Love the GPS though.
Who among you are very happy with their smartphones?
Ability to do wifi is important, GPS is a plus, a good ecosystem of applications is a near-must since I'd like to tether without paying the ridiculous fees for it.
Hackability/Open Platform is a plus, I'm a programmer so something I can tinker and learn on, and provide my own solutions to small problems is a big boon for me.
A decent web browser is a small plus, but Opera Mini is near ubiquitous, so it shouldn't be a huge deal.
Please offer your suggestions for phones! <comment><USER2> As I've posted elsewhere, I think the Blackberry if vastly underestimated by people around these parts, which I don't really understand.

The OS is rock solid, they have very durable hardware construction, a huge number of features compared to the iPhone and a $20 API key will get you access to APIs which iPhone users only dream about (regular APIs require no key).

I don't know what you mean by hackability. The iPhone is good because with the amount of attention it has received, you can get a huge number of cracked applications, something you won't find on the BB. If you were planning on actually buying apps, this won't be a problem.

I used about 12 different BBs for a year and half, and about 2 weeks ago brought an iPhone. I am trying to give it a fair shot, but to be honest I will probably have to sell it soon - the amount of sacrifices you have to make up to use that pretty GUI are just too many.

<comment><USER3> > The OS is rock solid > I used about 12 different BBs for a year and half

I've used a Blackberry, an iPhone, Nokia N95, and Windows Mobile 2005/6 in the last 4 years.

Blackberry was _by far_ the most stable. Mine never ever crashed, after about a year and a half of daily use.

Is there a BB with a gecko / webkit / opera browser?

<comment><USER4> You can download Opera for the BB (at leas the Curve, whatever model that is) but I honestly found that I preferred the built-in Browser app over it, and I am a long-time Opera user. Trying to use the mobile Opera is when you really start to feel constrained by the BB's UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't meet your criteria, but I recommend the Palm Centro without hesitation. The ecosystem of developers and applications (freeware, shareware and commercial) is enormous.

Say what you will about the operating system being old (not to mention the sad, backwards ways of Palm, the company), but my Centro is running brand new programs alongside 8 year old applications without a problem. Oh, and the Centro has real copy and paste.

The GSM version of the Centro also has the lowest SAR radiation levels of any phone I've seen (it's something like 0.74).

I share my Centro's data plan over Bluetooth with my Nokia N810 tablet all the time. Ironically, all my Palm software also runs on the N810 with the Garnet VM from Access.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll definitely look into it, I did consider a Palm in general in lieu of that Treo I mentioned. If it's price competitive and it has some of the features I'm looking for, I'll strongly consider it. Thanks for the heads up.

Personally not concerned with the radiation levels though. Power output of a cellphone is a couple orders of magnitude below anything I see causing cancer or non-trival DNA damage.

<comment><USER6> What constitutes trivial DNA damage?

<comment><AUTHOR> the amount you receive by spending 1 hour in the sun.

next question?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a BlackBerry Curve on T-Mobile, and generally think it's the best mobile email client I've ever used. There are a decent number of downloadable apps, and OTA J2ME provisioning is actually pretty awesome. In terms of "hackability", it's tough to find anything better than a full-featured, reasonably-fast Java stack, since you can do development and deployment from your choice of platforms and hosting providers.

However, the Curve firmware (at least at OS version 4.3) has two major flaws. First, it's intermittently crash-prone and slow when using 3rd-party applications. Second, it locks up after a few minutes and has to be hard- rebooted when I try to use it as a Bluetooth modem for my Mac, which is especially annoying since a full restart takes more than five minutes.

Regardless, I still think I made the right choice in selecting the Curve over an iPhone, for one simple reason: UMA. Being able to pay $20/mo. for unlimited calling over any WiFi network has already paid for itself many times over when I've been outside the US (or even in rural parts of the US) and avoided having to pay roaming fees.

<comment><USER5> Have you used the MidpSSH client for the BlackBerry? I'd be interested to hear how well it works compared to what's available for iPhone, Palm OS, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anything with a full touch screen is a good start.

Found the iPhone 3G was disappointing (more like a toy) compared to my Blackberry.

However, the HTC I've been using for about a year (<http://www.coolsmartphone.com/article727.html>) is excellent and definitely the best of the lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Intriguing. Can I find a tethering app to access my phone's internet via my laptop using Windows Mobile on this HTC? I was interested in the HTC Touch, but the reviews killed it for me. This one looks fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had a Nokia N70 before I got my N95, and the N95 is definitely must faster (less "laggy") but still not perfect. The quality is fine, and I can't think of many features it doesn't have. If you want a good, solid, reliable phone, the N95 is the best thing I've ever seen from Nokia, and I place Nokia at the top of the list for mobiles.

As for something you can hack -- I don't know. I gather there are options for the Nokias, but I've never got around to trying them. I'd avoid MS and Apple on principle (the totalitarianism, as you say, is a deal breaker) and Palm is a bit overpriced and underpowered; they're really stuck in the 1990s, the poor dears. What does that leave? Not much.

<comment><AUTHOR> While I'm not a partisan, and value trying to be as even-handed as possible in evaluating situations, I hand Microsoft the torch in the case of mobile. They've been far more fair, open, and straight-forward with Windows Mobile and the APIs.

Bonus points that I use Windows dev platforms on a regular basis, so it would be fairly trivial for me to deploy on a windows mobile phone.

Still bouncing around the ideas I'm seeing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a blackberry pearl with t-mobile, and it's not bad. The data rate is slow (200k if you're lucky, usually much lower than that), but it lets you use the DUN bluetooth profile when connected with OSX, so it's an acceptable wireless modem, and a decent phone. The DUN profile only seems to work with my powerbook though; I've tried using the phone as a bluetooth modem with my nokia 770, and the blackberry won't advertise that profile in that situation. I don't understand how that works, but it's a limitation to be aware of.

I'm personally holding out for an Android device, mostly because the pearl thing in the blackberry gets crap in it and then you can't really use the UI until you manage to work the dust particles out.

Also, what is this excellent data plan you're speaking of? Is it just the $40/month unlimited internet plan on their 2G network, or is there an actual 3G data plan somewhere that I haven't been able to find?

<comment><AUTHOR> non blackberry devices get unlimited data for $20, this is why I'm trying to avoid blackberry devices, or at least avoid letting them know I have one.

<comment><USER11> In my area, the BlackBerry plan is also $20. On HowardForums, people used the BlackBerry plans when the data plan got bumped up to $30.

Unless you're grandfathered into the ancient $5.99 T-Zones plan, I don't think you will find a cheaper option.

Also, I think a BlackBerry without the BlackBerry plan will be heavily neutered. I'm guessing email won't work because it depends on the BIS backend. BIS is used for "personal" email things like your school's Exchange server, your Gmail account, and your IMAP/POP account. BES is used for hooking up with corporate Exchange setups running BlackBerry's Enterprise backends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been using HTC P3300 (<http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_p3300-1693.php>) and I've found it almost a replacement for my laptop to use it on the go. I use it to check my mails, browsing (OperaMini rox), connect to my servers using Putty, car navigation using Pocket Google Maps, WarDriving, storage device and a lot of other stuff including using it as speedometer :)

I am thinking about upgarding to HTC TyTn II or HTC Touch Pro. Both are great phones. Infact Windows Mobile is a cool platform with so many useful applications. Windows Mobile doesn't is great out of the box but with little tweaking no other phones can beat it.

I recommend that you go for any Windows Mobile 6.1 based device. However HTC TyTn II and Touch Pro are highly recommended :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I would advise against a PalmOS based device if you plan on doing development. The OS is outdated, and on its last legs.

The iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, and the BlackBerry OS are all more modern and have better tools. Can't comment on Symbian.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Not only is it old, nobody really knows what plan or timetable Access has for it.

If I were a developer of mobile phone software, I'd go iPhone all the way. Despite Apple's restrictions, every single iPhone owner would have easy and immediate access to my software. RIM's version of an "app store" looks pretty empty at the moment:

<http://na.blackberry.com/eng/builtforblackberry/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll be interested in what folks have to say, too. I have a Nokia 3650 I'm looking to replace. It's been a nice system for years, but it's time to move on. The main thing I've missed on the 3650 is a keyboard. Actually coding on the system is prohibitively slow except for the shortest bug fixes or constant changes. T-Mobile's data service has been good and affordable for me, so at this point I'm not looking to change providers.

If the Nokia 810 had a phone I'd get one in a heartbeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Roommate has one, it's nifty but one of the laggiest mothers I've ever used. I'd go berserk using it as a phone, personally. :\

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nokia addressed most of the N95 issues you describe with the N95-3, also called the N95 8Gb.

'Tethering' (bluetooth) is trivial so long as you know the APN. Works great on the train for me.

Browser is webkit based and works very nicely, except in their wisdom they've made tabs difficult.

</comment><comment><USER15> Obvious solution: Buy iPhone. Get approved by Apple as a developer. Write awesome application. Make 1000+ bucks a day. Buy every other cell phone on your list and compare them yourself. :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> I think I'm missing something important here.

What is the purpose of a smartphone in the first place, particularly for 'a young programmer' ?

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been considering getting an Openmoko:

<http://www.openmoko.com>

Cheers

</comment><comment><USER18> I've got a friend with an HTC touch, and it is awesome. Definitely recommend taking a look at the HTC lineup.

<comment><USER3> Don't ever rely on HTC backup tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would recommend getting Nokia E71 if you can get it in the US.</comment>


Postmates CEO tells customer to 'f--- off' - <AUTHOR> http://www.torontosun.com/2013/09/16/postmates-ceo-tells-customer-to-f----off

<comment><USER3> I'm not going to excuse the faux pas, but customer service is a hard job. I answered nearly all customer support for my company for years, until we finally hired people to do it. The change in my mental health when this happened was profound.

People are sometimes nice, but often irate, cruel, or upset. That wears on you after a while, unless you are a total psychopath. I learned to cope by not reading emails until I was in a good state of mind in the morning, where before I would flip on my phone the moment I awoke. I can understand why the Postmates CEO needs to blow off some steam, though an email to staff is of course inappropriate. Save the user support gossip for office banter.

Thankfully, we haven't had any turnover in our support people (1 full-time and 1 part-time), but it's a job that is rife with it. It just wears you down after a while. If you are doing support for your new start-up, give yourself a break and manage your state of mind when you read support. And if you hire people to do support, make sure you empathize with their position, encourage them relentlessly, and tell them what bastards some users can be.

Sorry users, you are everything to me, but you get us down sometimes! We care so much about the product and what people think of it, and the lowest trenches for us are when we don't do a good job for someone, either in the software or support.

<comment><USER4> Did you employ any other practical/teachable techniques to "manage your state of mind"?

<comment><USER3> 1) The one I mentioned (don't start out your day with support) is important. Have breakfast first, drink your coffee, read Hacker News.

2) Take a break. We answer support even nights and weekends, and this is important in connecting with users early on, but on nights when you aren't in tip-top shape, just don't do it.

3) Complain to your co-workers. Venting helps.

4) Strenuous exercise really helps. Nothing like a 20 mile hike to clear your mind.

5) Vacations without internet access.

And of course, make your product better! Fixing bugs is usually a better way to stop complaints than adding features. People thanking you for your work is a soothing balm, and you can eliminate a lot of harsh complaints. I'm not sure how actionable the advice is, but hang in there and do good work, and ceterus paribus, it will be a fulfilling existence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Haha, it wasn't a joke. He said it under the assumption that in no way it would be forwarded to the customer. Oooops. Employees are always saying stuff like that, sort of a behind the scenes tough guy/gal thing, while smiling to the customer. It's just a human way to deal with customer frustration I guess.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the worst part, actually, is that he tried to make the excuse that it was a "joke". That comes across as disingenuous.

We all know it wasn't a joke (a joke = funny). But I don't think it was meant to be literal either. It was a pretty clear instruction from the CEO to the staff to basically tell the customer to go away. There's no reason for the CEO to translate that message to his staff -- a good customer service person knows exactly what that means:

CEO: "Tell him to fuck off"

Staff: "We are very sorry to hear about your problem, but I'm afraid at this point there's nothing we're going to be able to do further to assist you. I know this may be disappointing to you, but please understand that we receive a lot of concerns and that after reviewing......." Etc etc.

The only issue here is that the internal message got out, which is indeed embarrassing. The CEO's job was to make the final call on how to deal with the customer, and good customer service sometimes means telling some customers to, well, fuck off.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's a good idea to tell customers to "fuck off." Even behind their back where they aren't meant to see it. Even just in your own head. It's not a good attitude. That's just my two cents.

<comment><USER6> I agree in theory. But the fact is there are customers who are simply irrational. They use your $5 product, make up an excuse to be unhappy, and then demand $1000 in credit. They'll threaten you with "negative publicity" if you don't give them exactly what they want, etc. etc.

Thankfully, these folks are few and far between, and I have no idea if this person in the Postmates case was one of them (haven't seen the whole thread), but the fact is you really do need to put your foot down as a business at some point, and telling a customer to fuck off -- internally or otherwise -- is necessary in some cases. Good customer service is one thing - <USER2> customers waste your time and bully you is another.

<comment><USER8> "Firing" a toxic or bad customer isn't the same as telling them to f-off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh, come on. Who among us has not said something like this in private about one of our customers? The only problem here is that it got leaked out.

<comment><USER8> I don't think I've thought this in over a decade. Early in my career, my attitude might have been a little more confrontational.

Experience has given me thick skin and taught me not to take anything personally. If a customer is toxic, then I just tell them to take their business elsewhere. There's no need to lower yourself to a bad customer's level by getting vulgar.

<comment><USER10> Well then you're better than some of us. Congrats.

I also occasionally leave the restroom without washing my hands if I'm in a really big hurry too. Gross, I know, but I'm a flawed guy.

The only "excuse" Bastian has offered is context. He's taking full responsibility though. I'm not sure what more he can do but wait for this to blow over. It doesn't make him a bad CEO, it just means he got frustrated and said something he shouldn't have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As embarrassing as it is, he didn't actually tell customer to fuck off.

Apparently some poor sod in support didn't trim internal exchange when using last mail in the chain to reply to that lady.

</comment><comment> ali- His "apology": [http://blog.postmates.com/post/61340672198/a-message-to- our-...](http://blog.postmates.com/post/61340672198/a-message-to-our- customers-from-our-ceo)

Last night I sent a private e-mail to our Customer Service team in response to a customer complaint regarding her past orders and restaurant profile. My e-mail, which outlined how to resolve the customer issue, contained a bad joke which was very poor in taste. Subsequently, the bad joke was sent to the customer. What I said was a major lapse in judgement on my part. I deeply regret this. I immediately reached out to the customer and offered my full and sincere apology. I would like to extend that same apology to all of our customers and Customer Service team. There is no excuse for this.

At Postmates we love and value our world-class Customer Service. We take great pride in our Customer Service team. However, with my comment I have not lived up to our own standards and also damaged my team's reputation.

I cannot find the words to describe how much I value our customers and how deeply I care about them being happy. There is no excuse for this type of conduct.

I take full responsibility for my actions. I am sincerely sorry. Bastian Lehmann

<comment> jon-wood I'm not sure why you call this an "apology" in quotes. Seems like a textbook accepting of responsibility to me.

<comment><USER12> It is a very lacking apology because it contains no commitment to decreasing the chances of this happening again.

<comment><USER13> Not every failure needs a post-mortem. What do you want him to say: "We've determined that all employees -- including me -- need to attend sensitivity training to ensure that this does not happen again"? Or perhaps: "We will install filtering software to catch this kind of message before it ever reaches our customers in the future"?

No - it's not an operational failure to be picked at until a systemic solution is arrived at, it's a human failure. _His_ failure specifically, and he acknowledges this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've done customer technical support both in person, over the phone, and via email -- and yes, you get rough customers, rude customers and ridiculous customers. But maybe I just take it better than most, because you can write of the cranks and the fools easily, and you can empathise with everyone else because they have real problems they want to solve.

And telling the customer to "f __* off "? Even as a joke, you just don't put it out there... if you ever have to feel like that you make sure it's totally private!

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of a similar incident where a customer accidentally got a similar message from the owners/management forwarded by customer support: according to the message, he was a "freak and a very weird dude."

[http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54/poker-beats-brags- varia...](http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54/poker-beats-brags- variance/beat-am-freak-very-weird-dude-52809/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd call the customer's response to his apology both classy and appropriate: Yes, obviously he meant the sentiment behind it (in the way people often talk about those they don't know personally or who aren't standing right in front of them), but accepting the apology is a nice change from the normal "OMG EVERYTHING IS A CRISIS THIS IS AWFUL" reaction we normally see from Problems On the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm just curious how this could even happen from a workflow perspective. A customer service rep forwards an email to the CEO asking how to handle a situation, the CEO says "Tell her to fuck off", and the rep... forwards the message back to the customer?

<comment><USER18> No, the customer emailed the CEO directly. [https://twitter.com/Erin_Boudreau/status/379294594866741249](https://twitter.com/Erin_Boudreau/status/379294594866741249)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's weird to see this on the Toronto Sun. (hometown gossipy newspaper)

<comment><USER20> I'd never heard of postmates until now, so I think the strategy is working for them very well.

<comment><USER21> Ditto. Looks like a cool app/service - [http://postmates.com/app](http://postmates.com/app)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And actually... this is pretty poor form from the customer support... poor technical understanding to not delete the trailing email forwards if nothing else!

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't know anything about Postmates or their CEO, or about the situation beyond what was reported...but I could see how this was meant as a harmless, internal quip that was meant to be ironically flippant. I can think of a few situations where a customer or client has an incredibly important and entirely reasonable need/complaint, such that it makes the company look sheepish for not having thought of it, and saying something like: "Oh Christ, someone's concerned about [our product/program/whatever] potentially burning their house down. What a whiner!"...but in the "Oh-shit-this-is-so-serious-that-I-need-to- lighten-up" tone of voice.

So I'm totally willing to accept that the CEO was being flippant here....the problem is that you should never do it in email...or _anything_ written. Things in writing have a permanency that long outlast their original context...and that's even before someone selectively cherry picks from it.

<comment><USER23> Couldn't agree more, it's a lesson that applies to almost anything in life, don't put it in writing unless you want it to be seen by a wider audience than the intended.</comment></comment>


Mapping out dev grants in Ethereum and beyond - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/ecf-review/mapping-out-grants-in-ethereum-and-beyond-41394b7ca3ba <comment><AUTHOR> Have more dev grant programs to refer besides the ones included here? Send them on over:

[https://ecfund.typeform.com/to/YaakUT](https://ecfund.typeform.com/to/YaakUT)</comment>


Blogger of the Year -- 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/december/bloggerOfTheYear2012

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a programmer today because of my mother (Who volunteered in my Elementary school's computer lab) and because of the articles I read by Dave Winer, Joel Spolsky and Philip Greenspun in the late 90s and early 2000. If you have not poked around <http://philip.greenspun.com> it's worth the time to go digging a bit. There are some gems hidden there from ten years ago.</comment>


The Twitter Contradiction - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2016/02/the-twitter-contradiction/ <comment><USER2> The grumbling around Twitter is about its continued quarterly losses and how it's not fulfilling the expected ROI from the $2.8 billion invested.

Not relevant to puzzling out the losses is explaining all the other "cool" things about Twitter such as "giving people a voice" or "a broadcasting platform for journalists/celebrities/revolutionists/politicians". That's emotional analysis instead of financial analysis.

The common defenses of Twitter often has the same flaws in writing structure:

1) Ignore the billions invested and repeated losses on the balance sheet

2) Then point out some amazing feature or undeniable human benefit that stirs the emotions and imagination

Examples...

I don't get the narrative and negativity about Iridium/Motorola satellite phone service?! Who wouldn't want the ability to make global phone calls from the middle of the ocean, Antarctica, and Mt Everest?! Humanity needs a phone like that! Well, all those cool things don't matter, the company went bankrupt.

I don't get the narrative around the Concorde supersonic airplane? Who wouldn't wouldn't value the ability to fly New York to London in 3 hours instead of 6?! Well, the airlines cancelled the program after financial analysis showed it barely broke even or lost money.

Idea for blog quality improvement: Instead of talking up the positive features of whatever company product, explain how the monetary numbers can work out.

<comment><USER3> you would think a VC - out of the average person out there - would, you know, kinda sorta pay attention to the numbers, maybe?

but it seems they just throw stacks of bills at targets and hope that one of them sticks

<comment><AUTHOR> you would think a non VC - compared to a seasoned professional with a great track record - would, you know, kinda sorta pay attention to what the seasoned professional says, maybe?

But it seems they just throw out unthoughtful comments and hope that someone falls for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're a celebrity, its a must-use product.

If you're a normal person, nobody cares about you on Twitter. You get virtually no feedback on the content you produce. It's a one sided tool for following, not sharing or creating.

<comment><USER5> And it's a bad product for following. I didn't see any of the NBA player tweets that he mentioned. I didn't know they existed before this article. And it's something I would be interested in, I just wasn't on Twitter in the few seconds where that topic was relevant.

<comment><USER6> ESPN published an article the day after with about 10-12 tweets surrounding the victory. You didn't need to be on Twitter to see it, just on ESPN the day after to realize what you missed.

<comment><USER7> But Twitter didn't capture that economic value -- ESPN did.

<comment><AUTHOR> But Twitter created the value -- and that is the twitter contradiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Right, exactly- Twitter has always been a circle jerk, the people who use it are the large investors, celebrities, politicians and in general moneyed people, which leads them to think that twitter is valuable, since they "use it themselves" and "all their friends use it". These people are somewhat detached from reality.

But the advertising money and growth is in the massive numbers of ordinary people that click on ads, including those Snapchat and Instagram users that Twitter is actually loosing.

<comment><USER9> Access to what "large investors, celebrities, politicians and in general moneyed people" are thinking and discussing has some value, no?

<comment><USER8> That is redundant- 80% is already covered by the media however

<comment><USER9> I think there's value in Twitter being a primary source, but I guess YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yeah, Twitter's got tons of potential. It did a lot to realize that potential back during the Arab Spring, when it was used as the primary communications platform among activists. Twitter was proud of that, being such a huge part of social and political progress.

But that's not the Twitter of today. Now I more often read about how they've censored this or that. A trending hashtag that they disagree with will be removed from the trend list. Political activists that Twitter disagrees with will see their accounts de-verified or even outright banned.

They used to champion freedom of speech, now they are one of the internet's most prolific censors. To me, that is the Twitter Contradiction.

<comment><USER11> This is something that I hope DeRay McKesson can rectify now that he is part of Twitter's board.

I would argue that Twitter's potential is realized every time someone posts frontline reportage on it. Every time someone captures police brutality and spreads awareness via tweeting, that is the power of Twitter. It can be an incredibly empowering platform. It definitely still is the backbone for a lot of activists and organizing today

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> riiiiight, beyond cherry picked anecdotal evidence, I guess that explains the MAU numbers, because errrybody is on twitter twatting away incessantly

twitter was an interesting novelty a few years ago but you can't sustain a worldclass communication platform when the user can't figure out how to use it effectively or how to keep track of and follow conversations

when the average user has to become a developer or a UI expert in your own freakish cult of UI to be able to use your product... well, don't be surprised when they leave in a confused herd

this isn't rocket science, old fashioned bboards and forums up to now have this stuff figured out

but twitter came along and said, F* that! what we need are MODAL windows out the yin-yang to confuse the hell out of each and every user until they leave and go use something with better UI

</comment><comment><USER12> Think the real contradiction is.. that something so valuable is something that is so hard to monitize.

</comment><comment><USER13> From the comments section on avc.com:

"Twitter isn't a social network. It's a real-time publishing engine and consumer-customizable distribution network."

I couldn't agree more. For me it's a news reader and occasionally a content marketing channel.

<comment><AUTHOR> This highlights my biggest complaint about twitter. I use it largely as your quote describes, to get publish events from people/organizations I'm interested in. In short, I use it like a modern RSS feed. The problem is that a whole bunch of people see twitter as something different, including twitter if their plan to increase the tweet limit to 10,000 happens. Some use it as a commenting system. Some use it as a medium (think tweet storms), etc.

And this leaves me with the question, what is twitter trying to be? I honestly can't figure it out, and that's my issue with twitter.

<comment><USER14> AFAIK, the 10k limit change is intended to enable a publisher to include their content (article, etc) in an expanded version of their tweet. So instead of you clicking a headline in your RSS feed and getting the story, you'd hit the tweet and get the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes, Twitter absolutely is and will continue to be (for the near future) a very important part of the online ecosystem.

But. With every change to put more ads in the faces of users, every change to control the feed and get rid of the real-time nature of it, Twitter is killing itself. Once Twitter moves to a fully-controlled feed model, Mr. Wilson will no longer see those tweets from LeBron and DeMar and Kristaps in real-time, because his feed will be showing him stuff from an hour ago that is "hot" or that is sponsored or otherwise generates money for Twitter. Something with autoplaying video from a "sponsored submitter". Something without clickable links so it won't take you out of the Twitter sandbox.

There's a stench of death about Twitter. It's not dead, definitely not. But its owners are clearly intent on killing it.

That aroma is real and it's only getting stronger.

</comment><comment> grey-area Twitter have a problem with trolls and noise for more popular users, but it's still compelling enough for someone like Paul Graham to publish tweets like this _and_ continue using the platform: [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/703705844614094848](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/703705844614094848) and, as the article states, for the popular and the notable to use it as a broadcast platform and others to use it as a way of consuming the zeitgeist.

I think the replies to that pg tweet are the perfect distillation of all that is glorious and depressing about twitter - an open conversation with everyone in the world leads to repeated questions from the crowd punctuated by spam and trolls, and amidst the cacophony serendipitous discoveries and some interesting responses, for there is in twitter all that life can afford.

</comment><comment><USER16> The kids all use Insa and Snapchat, but the vast majority of people use Twitter to disseminate / find information and written content. Snapchat and Instagram are both more intended as "social networks" in its purest definition while Twitter (and FB to a degree) is a social network more geared towards written content and more in-depth conversations relating to this written content.

</comment><comment><USER17> I sometimes feel like Twitter is morphing to where the PR flacks come to say something. Which perhaps is good enough. I don't follow any of the a16z partners on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

<comment><USER18> Everyone knows it's true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> No matter how well-meaning or in how much sincerity this post was written, these guys have a vested interest.

Once (or IF) Twitter goes 15-40% over it's original IPO price again, these guys will cash out and forget what Twitter ever was.

<comment><USER20> At the moment I'm writing this, the very first line of the post is:

>So everyone around here knows I'm bullish on Twitter and we own a lot of stock. So take all of this in that context please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Twitter isn't going away. But will it make money in the same way that, for example, buying $10 billion of real estate and renting it out would make money?</comment>


Curl 7.50 Changes - <AUTHOR> https://curl.haxx.se/changes.html#7_50_0 <comment><USER2> is there something particularly noteworthy about this release? it just looks like some standard big fixes and the ability to get the http version from the api.

<comment><AUTHOR> "curl 7.50.0 adds support for IPv6 DNS64/NAT64 Networks on iOS == apps using libcurl can now get into app store fine again"

[https://twitter.com/bagder/status/756056910848221184](https://twitter.com/bagder/status/756056910848221184)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Somehow, I was totally unaware that CURL supported downloading via IMAP. Are people using CURL to download their email?

<comment><USER4> I can see that could be useful for extracting a report emailed as an attachment by a legacy system.

It's also possible to upload to an IMAP server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slightly unrelated, but just tried to install curl using Homebrew:

        $ brew link -f curl
        Linking /usr/local/Cellar/curl/7.49.1... 352 symlinks created

__352 __! That many?

<comment><USER6> It's all the man files in /usr/local/Cellar/curl//7.49.1/share/man/man3/

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> nice, though would love to see CoAP support.</comment>


Show HN: A Chrome extension that reveals PRISM in your browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jvoorhis/cloud-to-prism

<comment><USER2> Nice work. Can we rob a bank now?</comment>


Motorola launches Project Ara to modularize phone hardware  - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/29/modular-smartphones-arent-so-crazy-now-motorola-gets-in-on-the-action-with-project-ara/

<comment><USER2> This is the future of computing and mobile devices.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very awesome.</comment>


Ask HN: Quick Ways To Make Money As a Web Dev - <AUTHOR>

My start up just failed and I spent all my money on trying to get it to work.  I need to make some quick cash to make rent and pay my basic bills not to mention pay my credit cards down.  I can program in PHP and Python along with knowing drupal, wordpress, and a few frontend frameworks like bootstrap. <comment><USER2> Best way to quickly make money as a web dev is to be paid to write code :) you could start by making yourself contactable here (there's no email in your profile)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I added it to my profile and here it is also email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Same question here. (rant) I'm based in Australia and have found very difficult to land a full-time Job for an Entry level web developer. (adding I'm international, on a temporary working visa). freelance sites promote races to find the lower bidder and Job seeking boards are full of recruiters who usually ask for 5+ years of commercial experience in every known to man JavaScript framework + ASP.Net, PHP, SOAP, REST, LAMP environment and Cloud- based VPS what ever that means to the recruiter. (I feel relieved already) If any of you have read this far, my portfolio is on <http://smaugh.net/> and I'm available for hire!

<comment><USER4> I've found that it's all about the connections you make. Are there any nearby hackathons or meetups? They're great opportunities to get connected.

Also, not sure if this is intentional, but your carousal image looks a bit funny on larger screens <http://i.imgur.com/nTuf63B.jpg>

<comment><USER3> Hey Zach thank you for the heads-up, the carousel is intentional. However, it is worth checking if you found it estrange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty sure there are a bunch of start-ups out there with non-technical founders looking for web devs to build out down and dirty mvps. Can't imagine you have to look too hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not in the Valley and not sure how to get in contact with these people.

<comment><USER6> The seeking freelancers thread seems like an excellent start: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637667>

<comment><USER2> That is a great way to find some extra work but I've found it only works well if you post within a few hours of the thread starting. Watch out for it on the 1st of every month!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> why did your startup fail?

<comment><AUTHOR> Long story short my co-founder quit after we got rejected a second time when making it to the final round of an accelerator program. After she had quit she still wanted a very large sum of equity for all the design work along with the domain name which she owned. I ran out of money and couldn't come to an agreement with her so I had to just give up the idea.</comment></comment>


There Are No Laws of Physics, There's Only the Landscape - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/there-are-no-laws-of-physics-theres-only-the-landscape-20180604/ <comment><USER2> For those like me who are not too happy with this kind of "science" (for one, the title is worded in a way that makes this highly controversial view of reality sound like state of art in physics), "Not Even Wrong" [1] by Peter Woit is a great read for multiverse skepticism (mostly centered on "string multiverse", not quantum "many worlds").

[1] [https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/](https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/)

<comment><USER3> All models are wrong, but some are useful. -- George Box

And some are not useful except as a mental exercise. Maybe they will become useful at some point, maybe not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This feels off to me. Einstein's process did not come from the mathematics, but from an idea of what was happening. This enabled a great number of odd predictions which were verified (the Sun would bend the visible pathway of a star, there would be gravitational waves, etc...). String Theory feels like a theory which is starting at the wrong place. Not an idea of what process is happening and then seeing if the results fit, but an attempt to connect all the results into a theory. Pas bien por moi!

<comment><USER5> > String Theory feels like a theory which is starting at the wrong place. Not > an idea of what process is happening and then seeing if the results fit, but > an attempt to connect all the results into a theory.

Are you saying that it doesn't make any predictions (and is therefore unfalsifiable)?

<comment><USER6> >"Are you saying that it doesn't make any predictions (and is therefore unfalsifiable)?"

As I understand, its the opposite. String theory "predicts" any and every possible observation, then they cherry pick whatever predictions are already accepted as fact to say there is evidence for the theory.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but regular quantum mechanics does the same thing. It's under- constrained and allows for too many possibilities. So you assume that the observations wrought by Newtonian physics must be valid and use that to constrain the theory down to something that can be useful.

The difference is that the string model doesn't (yet) have any observations which we could use to constrain it in an analogous manner. But in studying it, one would hope to find areas of the theory that indicate where those observations could be made.

The point being, it is not so simple to just look at string theory and say you can _a priory_ determine it is flawed or wrongly motivated. That same kind of reasoning would likely have prevented Planck & Einstein from starting quantum theory.

<comment><USER6> >"observations wrought by Newtonian physics"

I'm not sure what this means. Is it different from just making an observation? Eg, "this light in the sky is of this color at that location", or "this object drops at that speed".

<comment><USER8> It just means that we need the correspondence principle to find useful quantum mechanical models. Without that, you're just talking about algebras acting on Hilbert spaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article says that one of the attractive qualities if string theory is that it has no free parameters. But then says that the particles a forces of the standard model are determined by the number and size of extra dimensions. Those sound an awful lot like free parameters.

Can someone with more than a passing familiarity with the field explain?

<comment><USER8> Normally in a physical theory, you have some equations describing the dynamics and you go looking for solutions to these equations. The dynamical equations may have some parameters (such as the constant G in Newtonian/Einsteinian gravity), and then there are usually additional parameters required to describe the solutions (such as the mass M of the gravitational field source).

String theory has the unusual property that its dynamical equations don't have free parameters. The dynamics is apparently unique. But there are many many solutions to these equations, and so there's a huge space of parameters from that. In particular, if you go looking for ways of embedding the Standard Model in string theory, all of its dynamical parameters (like the electron mass and Newton's constant) are realized as solution parameters.

<comment><USER10> Can I make Newtonian mechanics into a dyanically 0-free-parameter theory by stating that F == gMm/r^2 , where g is a solution parameter ("the gravity of the universal landscape" ?

<comment><USER8> You can do this -- and indeed, promoting constants to fields is a common technique in the analysis of field theories. But it's cheating if you say the constant is dynamical and then don't say what the dynamics is. In field theory, you have to make additional choices here, and there are a lot of additional parameters that enter.

In string theory, you don't have to/get to make a choice at all. The dynamics is uniquely determined. It's not exactly a free lunch, but it's a very unusual feature for a physical theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it just me, or does string theory seem like epicycles all over again: if you throw enough center-intersecting circles into the engine, it can emulate just about any observed movement of objects in the sky; a sort of "circular regression" in the same way that piling up polynomials gives us Polynomial Regression. String theory is like "dimensional regression". Regression is a powerful tool, but is NOT designed to directly "explain" phenomena, only emulate them.

Newton et. al. came along and gave us a much simpler model of gravity and the solar system such that we could toss out the messy nested circle models. (We still can't say that Newton's model is fully "right", but it's certainly simpler.)

<comment><USER12> Well, string theory is kind of the anti-epicycle. The epicycles in Ptolemaic astronomy were added to make the math conform to reality, but people didn't believe that the planets actually moved in epicyclic motion. Superstring theory started from the opposite standpoint: the Standard Model is math that works out, but the theory is messy, so superstring theory sought to make an "elegant" theory that checked out with the math... and ended up with a theory that is so general it can't really be disproven.

The end result is the same, but the paths to get there are completely different.

<comment><USER13> String theory was originally exciting because it had a graviton that worked, and to my knowledge it is really the only theory that contains both the standard model and gravity. LQG is not yet at the point of reproducing 3+1 space as far as I know. So, here's my proposal: saying that the earth orbits the sun in a universe where QED also is true isn't proof of string theory, but it does falsify the standard model and so far to my knowledge most of string competition.

<comment><USER12> > but it does falsify the standard model and so far to my knowledge most of > string competition.

Not really. The Standard Model makes no prediction about gravity; it makes no claim to. Gravity is so weak that it can be ignored almost everywhere where the other forces come into play: the contribution of gravity compared to electrostatic attraction on the atomic order is smaller than 0.01ZWD is to world GDP... for all of human history. The places where you have to worry about gravity and the other forces at the same time are places where we have precisely no ability to make observations that could distinguish between theories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm reminded of this beautiful quote from Chris Fuchs, regarding his advisor, the great John Archibald Wheeler:

> [Wheeler] would say things like, "In the end, the only law is that there is > no law." There's no ultimate law of physics. All the laws of physics are > mutable and that mutability itself is a principle of physics. He'd say, > there's no law of physics that hasn't been transcended. I saw this, and I > remembered my joke about how the laws of physics must be wrong, and I was > immensely attracted to this idea that maybe ultimately there actually are no > laws of physics. What there is in place of laws, I didn't know. But if the > laws weren't 100 percent trustworthy, maybe there was a back door to the > stars.

<comment><USER15> This sounds like semantic befuddlement (though, not on Wheeler's part; he was just engaging in wordplay).

Physical laws are not 'laws' in the sense that nature is required to abide by them. They are simply features of natural behavior that have been so overwhelmingly observed that we treat them as axioms.

An example of this is the 'law' of conservation of mass. Strictly speaking, nature does not follow this law. Nuclear reactions and subatomic interactions do not conserve mass. They conserve other quantities, but not mass in and of itself.

The idea that there is no ultimate law of physics is not novel or interesting. It's obvious on its face, unless you do not properly understand what 'law' means in the context of physics.

<comment><USER16> Law of physics implies a casual relationship in nature. Saying there are no laws of physics is saying nature is acausal. B always follows A for no reason other than it just happens to do so in our universe. This is the Humean view of causation, which is constant conjunction instead of there being a reason that A results in B.

The plus side is that you don't have to deal with causality, which is a tricky concept. Hume persuasively argued that causality is neither empirical nor a result of logic. The downside is that all necessity is totally arbitrary. It just so happens ... As such, there is no reason for anything we observe. Just descriptions.

<comment><USER17> Causality is separate. Laws of physics (conservation/symmetry) are constraints, not causality.

"a+b=7" implies that "a=3 implies b=4", and "b=4 implies a=3", without regard to what causes the other, or what caused the law to be true.

<comment><USER16> By implies, I mean that the laws of physics are approximating the actual laws of nature, which would be causal.

<comment><USER18> You are postulating here a priori that causality governs the movement of the universe. That is a philosophical position on how to interpret physical observation, but whereas archetypal temporal cause-and-effect phenomena is frequently observed, there are yet many physical phenomena that you and I regard as fact don't have obviously observed temporal causes. For example, we observe the Big Bang as well as the accelerating expansion of the universe, but don't have good explanations for their temporal cause. And everything in the universe is temporally caused by the Big Bang...

So what I'm trying to say here is that your claim here that causality governs the actual laws of nature is suspect, both because your comment has not been elaborate enough to specify what you mean by causality, and because one of the most popular notions of causality, i.e. temporal causality, seems, to a first approximation, not be a good model of the observable physics: it postulates a temporal cause for the big bang, but no time prior to the big bang is observable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a great quote from the X-Files by Scully on this topic.

"Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it. And that's a place to start. That's where the hope is."

</comment><comment><USER20> This is the one major reason I lost most of my desire to continue grad school (I was studying astrophysics). I chose physics specifically because I wanted to understand the universe. The way I thought of it was that I wanted to lift the hood of reality and see how things "really" worked. As a kid, I'd read a number of books on science and had heard of a quest for a Theory of Everything. I'd decided this was a quest I wanted to go on. I thought of it as the most worthy singular hidden treasure and I was willing to devote my life to digging for it.

But over the course of my undergrad, and hours debating with friends, and reading even more, I started to get an uneasy feeling. I decided to go to grad school, partly, because I still held on to the belief that there really was treasure at the end of that rainbow, and that we really could, if we were clever enough, "figure out" how things "really" worked. But, in grad school, it just continued to dawn on me how impossible it was for there to be only One True Theory. One way I thought about it was to regard physics as a program. Even if there were separate theories for different scales, or domains, it didn't matter, you could still regard the whole knowledge base as a single program and the scale and domain, along with physical observables, as inputs to the Physics Program. The output would be predictions for the state of the universe (or some subset, it didn't matter) at some later time, i.e., it would predict later observables' values.

The thing was, I had a hard time finding any logical justification for why there _had_ to be only _one_ program that could take in the known inputs and produce the known outputs. That is, there was no way to logically prove that there could _not_ be multiple equivalent programs that could produce the same output given the same input. I.e., there was no way to logically justify the notion that there could only be One True Physics. That is, the treasure I believed I'd be digging for, didn't _not_ exist, it was just that there was more than one treasure, and anyone could find their own.

This thought diminished some of the romance, so to speak, of the Quest for Truth, so I lost interest, for a time. Enough to stop taking grad school classes and just start working (coding). Maybe one day I'll create a program of my own.

<comment><USER21> Your comment stayed in my mind, about the (maybe futile) quest for the "one true theory". Today I was reading an article [1], and a passage reminded me of what you were talking about:

Schrödinger's theory proved easier to use than Heisenberg's, in part because it is more intuitive. Furthermore, first Schrödinger and then Paul Dirac proved that the two theories are equivalent. In physics any two theories that make precisely the same observable predictions are observably equivalent. And one of the predominant philosophical views of the age — logical positivism — held that any two observably equivalent theories are really one and the same theory.

...

Einstein demanded a clear and comprehensible account of what is going on in the physical world — at all scales — in space and time. Bohr thought that the key to quantum mechanics was the realization that no such thing could be had.

[1] [http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-philosophy- religion/t...](http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-philosophy-religion/tim- maudlin-defeat-reason)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a quote, in I believe one of Greg Egans books, about the idea that the probable end state of physics will be just a bunch of isomorphic theories, which I wish I could find right now.

<comment><USER23> For understanding why that might be, I find this to be an elegant little example: take a pattern of black and white stripes; is it white with black stripes, or is it black with white stripes? The two formulations are identical in consequence of what they describe, even though they frame things inversely. (Of course this is just a metaphor to hint toward something in the nature of language, and is not really a deep scenario if you dig into it.)

It seems likely that the descriptions we formulate in physical theories work because they create a pattern which is isomorphic to patterns we extract in physical measurements—but there's something in the nature of the universe and/or language so that there tends to be many ways to create some linguistic thing which produces exactly the same pattern.

<comment><USER13> That's actually one of the main ideas of positivism: that if two theories lead to the same physical predictions, they are the same theory. When positivism is presented as "every true thing is empirically knowable" it sounds kind of shaky, but if you instead go for, "you can't tell the difference between two internally-consistent claims unless you compare them with the world," then it sounds a lot more likely to be true.

<comment><USER16> > "you can't tell the difference between two internally-consistent claims > unless you compare them with the world," then it sounds a lot more likely to > be true.

But only if it's the case that we end up with more than one theory which explains the phenomena equally well. That doesn't seem to be what ends up happening. We don't have an equivalent to GR, QM, Evolution, or any other well established, large scale theory.

Positivism sounds closer to math than it does science. And that's because nature is a certain way, which means you probably can't have equivalent theories at sufficiently granular levels.

<comment><USER23> My understanding is that there are multiple precisely equivalent formulations of classical mechanics (Newtonian mechanics being one of them, but then there's e.g. Lagrangian mechanics[0] and other more exotic things).

Perhaps that doesn't cross your threshold for 'sufficient granularity'—but it took quite a bit of time to find the alternate formulations in classical mechanics (after Newton I mean), so just because we don't yet have them for certain more modern theories doesn't mean they aren't forthcoming.

Also, I'm pretty sure there are at least very nearly equivalent formulations of QM, e.g. the de broglie pilot wave stuff (often termed as an alternate 'interpretation', but my understanding is that the differences extend even to the level of mathematical formulation, and are not just some detached reflections on the 'meaning' of the theory or whatever.

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

<comment><USER13> > _so just because we don 't yet have them_

I think the strongest argument for positivism is that you can generate arbitrarily many trivial "different but the predictions are the same" theories from _any_ parent theory just by doing algebra. You can also generate arbitrarily many "the predictions are slightly different but our present experiments can't resolve it" theories from a parent theory by littering it with new, small constants and tiny interactions. Occam's razor will lead you astray about that, too: most of modern physics was at one time a small constant or a tiny interaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Physical theories imply physical laws and consistent variables which require consistent math and hard scientific research; There is no escaping that. To say that physics is like a "landscape" is like comparing scribble of a stick man to a Picasso. There is a lot we don't know about the universe, I think its time for writers and physicists to get on board with that and analyze the shit out of their vague and opaque understandings before hitting the enter key.

</comment><comment><USER25> Multiverse theories like string landscape, eternal inflation, or many-worlds generally have this property: Almost anything that possibly could happen will happen in some universe. But, it is said, that some universes are more frequent than others. From local observations we infer the global laws of physics, which tell us the relative distribution of different types of universes. But, surely there will be some "deceptive" universes, in which (purely by chance) observers are always mislead as to what the actual laws of physics are. Experimental error always goes in the same direction, such that the true laws of physics are never known, and those observers rationally believe in false laws of physics instead. Now, an observer in such a universe will rationally infer a given probability distribution of universes based on their local observations, but the distribution they infer will be completely wrong. My question is: how do we know we are not in such a universe? To say such universes must be exceedingly rare (even though existent) is sort of circular, because our conclusion they are rare is based on our idea of the global probability distribution, but in order to validly make the inference from local observation to global distribution we have to assume we are not in such a universe. But, if we can't know we are not in such a universe, then we can't know that some universes are "more likely" than others, which is a central claim of these theories, and what distinguishes them from David Lewis' modal realism. This is why I think all such "multiverse" theories should be rejected.

</comment><comment><USER26> But...

[http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-philosophy- religion/t...](http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-philosophy-religion/tim- maudlin-defeat-reason)

</comment><comment><USER27> Off-topic question that seems to trivial to take to Stack Exchange but I am struggling to find an answer to, maybe a physicist comes by and can provide an answer or relevant reference.

Let's take a spin 1/2 in the superposition state |0> \+ |1> ignoring normalization and then add the rest of the universe including a measuring device, an observer, and all the other bits and pieces of the environment. This state then undergoes unitary time evolution past the point where we measured the spin and the observer had a look at the measuring device.

It now seems to me that if the final state is a definite |0> or a definite |1>, then this measurement outcome must already have been present in the initial state, not necessarily as hidden variables of the spin but somewhere, for example in the micro states of the measuring device. If the final state could indeed be either |0> or |1> independent of the initial state, time evolution would not be unitary, it would not even be a function of the initial state.

The only other option seems to be that the final state is still a superposition and we have to reach for something like the multiverse interpretation to reconcile the fact that we indeed observe a definite final state. So what is the correct or at least common way to think about this? Time evolution is only approximately or sometimes unitary? The measurement outcome is, similar to decoherence, determined by the environment? The final state is still a superposition? Non of those seems to be a particularly attractive choice. Or did I somewhere make a stupid mistake?

<comment><USER28> I just finished teaching a Jr/Sr undergrad Quantum Mechanics course last semester, so I'll take a stab at answering this.

There are two approaches to answering this question. One of them invokes the concept of "the collapse of the wavefunction" at the moment of measurement: when an observer actually measures the outcome of such an experiment, the universe probabilistically selects one of the possible outcomes as "true" and proceeds from there. This "collapse" process is explicitly non-unitary. You may ask, "What entities qualify as 'observers' to trigger collapse?", and the answer is basically "It's not well-defined." As you might gather from that, it's not clear to me that you can include an "observer" in this sense as part of the overall wavefunction of the universe at all, though perhaps people who have studied the foundations of quantum mechanics in more detail could give a better answer.

The other option is pretty much exactly what you've described in your final paragraph: you don't invoke "collapse of the wavefunction" at all, and the final quantum state of the universe after measurement is indeed a superposition of "|0> and observer who saw '0'" and "|1> and observer who saw '1'". Because anything we'd call an "observer" will be a large, complex system, there will very rapidly be a vast number of tiny, "pseudo-random" differences between the two branches of the wavefunction, ensuring that there won't be opportunities for the two branches to experience significant constructive or destructive interference in the future: they'll evolve pretty much completely independently from then on. (This concept is called "decoherence", which you've made reference to, and I'm definitely not an expert on it, but I'm told it's become quite important in research on quantum computing.) There's still a probabilistic question of which branch of the wavefunction a given observer might _experience_ (and understanding why _that_ happens is an enormously subtle question; I've seen some work by Sean Carroll among others trying to make progress on it), but once a given observer has measured a particular outcome to the experiment, the math of quantum mechanics guarantees that they'll continue to measure consistent results after that. This is more or less the Everett "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics.

As you might gather, I'm partial to the latter interpretation, in part because it's where the math seems to most naturally lead (the first time I felt like I really understood quantum mechanics was after a very math-heavy graduate course taught by Robert Geroch), and in part because I've never been able to make sense of what wavefunction collapse might mean (and never been happy about its violation of unitarity).

<comment><USER27> _As you might gather from that, it 's not clear to me that you can include an "observer" in this sense as part of the overall wavefunction of the universe at all, though perhaps people who have studied the foundations of quantum mechanics in more detail could give a better answer._

I did some more reading and it seems that at least some try to do what I also considered, try to attribute the randomness in the outcome to the randomness and uncertainty in the initial state of the measuring device, observer, and environment. This then raises the question why all kinds of measuring devices produce the same distribution of measurement results if the concrete outcome essentially only depends on the initial state of the measuring device. And this also has the smell of a hidden variable theory where the hidden variables are in the measurement device, would this be compatible with EPR?

I also took away some things to follow up on from your comments on Everett but unlike you I don't really like multiverses and so this will have to wait for some time. I however agree that Everett makes the most sense with regard to completeness and consistency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _The Map is Not the Territory!_

[https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_map_is_not_the_territory](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_map_is_not_the_territory)

Another piece of widespread ignorance I've seen here on HN, is the treatment of conservation laws as if they're baked into the fabric of reality. This results in programmers making philosophical/cosmological arguments in ignorance. As far as we know, conservation laws are not baked into reality. Instead, they are very useful analysis tools which can take advantage of symmetries. (Or near-symmetries.) Any given conservation law can disappear if a given symmetry doesn't apply, but Noether's Theorem still remains.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04ERSb06dOg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04ERSb06dOg)

If you want to see an example of how social media "bubbles" can impede the dissemination of knowledge, note that I've actually been flagged on HN for trying to explain this, apparently because someone misread this as advocacy for perpetual motion machines. It is not! (Also, because I used <facepalm> \-- but when you're wrong, you're wrong, and when you're wrong and you think it's clever, it feels worse.)

(That title, "The Map is Not the Territory" acts as a pointer to a series of literary references. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Map_and_the_Territory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Map_and_the_Territory) )

<comment><USER10> What does "baked into reality" mean? We can never know more about reality than what we observe, and furthermore conservation laws are axiomatic -- conservation simply means that we are able to account for (almost) everything we observe, in a consistent way. When conservation is broken, we name a new form of energy, and (so far), we find that it can by accounted in a consistent, predictable way. (Dark matter is an unsolved problem. Knowledge is incomplete. That doesn't mean conservation is false.)

When it comes to fundamental science, a consistent map _is_ the territory. "Map is not the territory" applies to simplifications that omit detail.

I don't see people trying to be "clever".

<comment><USER29> _What does "baked into reality" mean? We can never know more about reality than what we observe, and furthermore conservation laws are axiomatic -- conservation simply means that we are able to account for (almost) everything we observe, in a consistent way._

You said it right there. "Almost." We keep on prying and doing experiments, and we can't find _any_ exception. If we've tried hard enough for long enough, we can start to conclude that we're probably getting close to reality. If we pry and we find it's "almost" then we know it's not baked into reality.

 _When conservation is broken, we name a new form of energy, and (so far), we find that it can by accounted in a consistent, predictable way. (Dark matter is an unsolved problem._

[Citation Needed] Yes, we still don't know what Dark Matter is, but do you understand that dark energy is not dark matter, and the current model for dark energy involves space expanding and more dark energy appearing due to the space expanding? Citing dark energy is tantamount to admitting that conservation of energy isn't universal.

 _When it comes to fundamental science, a consistent map is the territory._

Arrgh. You're getting your pointers mixed up here. A context where science is the territory would be the study of Science, as in the philosophy of science. When it comes to fundamental reality, Science is the map and fundamental reality is the territory.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, I should have said we don't understand dark energy yet.

In what sense does "fundamental reality" exist?

<comment><USER16> That which gives rise to experimental results and perception. If you don't think there's a real world responsible for those, then how do you explain what we sense and the results from experiments? What makes the technology work? God?

<comment><USER17> I surely don't know. That's metaphysics, not science.

<comment><USER29> _I surely don 't know. That's metaphysics, not science._

But you can clearly do science on the technology. People do this with high degrees of success, developing theoretical models with high predictive ability. It's called "reverse engineering." If you're going to retreat into metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, that's up to you. The doing and the results will speak for themselves, and no one will pay attention to the metaphysical mumbo- jumbo obscurantists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is fake news. Jump off a 10 story building balcony into a cement and see if "There Are No Laws of Physics" or the title can be changed.</comment>


Why Nerds are Unpopular - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

<comment><USER2> This should have (2003) tags</comment>


FDA announces plan to regulate trans-fats - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/11/fda-announces-plan-to-regulate-trans-fats/ <comment><USER2> Great, more regulation. Next abstract intangible war for the up-coming decade: War on Obesity. We're sure to win!</comment>


Are we still doing OOP? - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackinghat.com/index.php/programming/programming-like-its-1995

<comment><USER4> Terrible blog post: present a series of special cases where OOP is not the best fit => throw OOP away except for class libraries?

Thanks to Paul Graham's language abuse, dead is becoming a meme: "X is dead" = "I don't use X".

<comment><USER5> Proper name

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ironically, I don't think OOP was really meant to be used for business objects. I think inheritance doesn't work very well with objects whose backing store needs to fit into a relational database someplace.

OO really shines with UI programming, where incrementally building up behaviour through inheritance makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER7> If the classes in your system vary a lot in behavior but not in their internal state then mapping to a database can be straightforward.

With lots of variations in object structure things can be horrible - <USER3> designs that have more tables than most tables have rows.

<comment><USER8> > With lots of variations in object structure things can be horrible - <USER3> > designs that have more tables than most tables have rows.

This is the problem document databases are designed to solve. :)

<comment><USER7> Maybe someone should create an ERP system based on one then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. How bizarre to consider Javascript not object-oriented programming. The entire page is represented in objects.

2\. I think the worst thing that happened in OOP was the development of ER- like methods (Rumbaugh, Booch) to "model" the system before it got built. It doesn't clarify anything and it doesn't fit with the original idea from Smalltalk, where software is developed in a gradual and exploratory style. When he states you don't need to develop a "complex object class hierarchy" for a small task, I think he is falling into this trap.

3\. Obviously, other approaches are good for a number of problems, and OOP is not the be-all and end-all. I would never avoid using it, though, because it is good for many problems, especially UI. OOP is worst in static languages (EC++), and best in dynamic languages (Smalltalk, Ruby, JS), in my opinion.

4\. Spreadsheets. I wish the VBA interface to Excel were more OO, because I think the methods are on the wrong interfaces. There is definitely room for improvement. OTOH, the user interface is a facade around something that may or may not be implemented in OO. I also wish that I could refer to things in the user interface using OO methods, kind of like using Prototype in JS.

5\. In financial applications, I wonder what technique allows him to "innovate" without his model "breaking down". He doesn't say, but it sure seems like he doesn't like objects! (for whatever reason, he also doesn't really say.)

6\. Finally, I get the feeling that he's really saying he no longer writes a real object model for his applications. This is, apparently, because the object libraries he is working with have gotten so good at modeling everything he needs that he is mostly writing glue, and it is all fitting into a few modules of mostly procedural code. So, in other words, OO is a huge success.

</comment><comment><USER10> As with all programming methodologies; OOP is a useful tool for situations where it works.

Outside of that other things become useful... this is how the world has always worked :)

<comment> loup-vaillant Of course. The real question is, where does it work? (And why?)

Personally, I don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is not so much OO that is receding as _inheritance_. Although that is not recent -- it must have been around 1995-2000 that doubts were becoming popularly known. Inheritance is somewhat interesting though: it is a formalised mechanism or pattern for changing software function -- there doesn't seem much else like that. Why did it not work very well?

As to OO, Bertrand Meyer gives the best rationale: it is about organising software around data instead of procedure, because data is more stable. That yields a rather abstract definition, but in that sense OO is perhaps more alive now than ever.

What has happened is that the developer's canvas has expanded enormously. We think and write for the WWW first now. The data types are the various sub- parts and relations of web standards. Our software is very much organised around these, they just don't map to small language features.

</comment><comment><USER12> The reason OO exists to the degree it does in my mind is that it makes it easier for Enterprise Architects to write code in Visio, this also lends itself to directly modeling the domain so managers don't have to think. Which leads to public class Money { public string Currency { get; set; } public float Price { get; set; } }

"The money class is the root of all evil"

<comment><USER13> OO models exist because they reflect how we describe things when _not_ talking to computers. "This is Spot. Spot Is-A Dog. See Spot.run(). Spot.runs == :fast."

They're a crutch for people who can't (or don't have the training to) think in terms of sets, mappings, graphs, combinators, etc.

<comment><USER4> ...or maybe FP is a crutch for mathematicians and purists. You're making a huge mistake: we shouldn't adapt our thinking to computers, we should adapt computers to our thinking and make them easier to operate. According to your logic, writing hexadecimal code is the holy grail of computer programming.

<comment> loup-vaillant And _you_ are making an equally huge mistake: that thinking in terms of sets, mappings, graphs, combinators, etc doesn't help. It does. And if a programmer is incapable of understanding those concepts, he should learn them.

The fact is, we shouldn't adapt computers to our thinking, nor our thinking to computers. We should adapt both to our problems.

<comment><USER4> Sure it helps, but that's not what derefr said. He said that any other type of thinking is a "crutch" and that the ideal of thinking is "thinking in terms of sets, mappings, graphs, combinators, etc".

By the way, "sets, mappings, graphs, combinators" is a pretty strange definition for a set. The element descriptions are vague and some of them seem unrelated to the others. That may be mathematically correct, but it doesn't make for a great argument.

<comment> loup-vaillant OK, I misread you.

That said, I tested both OO an FP, and my current opinion is that thinking more mathematically (in terms of sets, mappings…), almost always yields smaller designs, which are almost always more flexible and more efficient.

> By the way, "sets, mappings, graphs, combinators" is a pretty strange > definition for a set. The element descriptions are vague and some of them > seem unrelated to the others. That may be mathematically correct, but it > doesn't make for a great argument.

I don't understand you here. Derefr didn't make any mathematical statement. He didn't described the concepts, he named them. The four items he mentioned _are_ related. And why should they, anyway? The way I see it, Derefr just made a statement, not an argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Probably the most disturbing thing about the article is the original title: "Programming like it's 1995". I'd feel better if he had said "OOP is like so 1980's".

<comment> loup-vaillant The problem is, OOP as Alan Kay envisioned it isn't widely refered to any more. Now, we all talk about OOP as if Java started it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> With all respect to this author and this piece -- it was well done and he makes many salient points. There are some topics on HN that are just starting to bore the hell out of me. Apple fanboy-ism, or not. C++: it's complicated so it's bad. Famous person X says this about famous person/product Y. And bitching about OOP.

Look. OOP is just the use of categorization and set theory to organize code and data. It doesn't have to involve a lot wiring things together, it doesn't have to mean tremendously huge class diagrams before coding, and it is absolutely not related to one particular language. I can use OOP techniques in any language, and to the degree they're necessary, I should. It's just a tool.

I understand that the OOP _movement_ got way overblown and annoying, but we as technologist are always making overly-broad generalizations of anything we do. There's a tremendous amount of selection bias that goes on in technology, most of it hidden. I remember in one of my early contracting jobs we had a PM who was a FoxPro programmer. No matter what the problem we were talking about, somehow he would feel that FoxPro was the best answer for that problem.

At the time I thought he was unique -- sort of a joke. Looking back over many years of observing technologists, however? He was the rule, not the exception. At the risk of stating the obvious we only understand those things we have familiarity with. This means if you haven't programmed in OOP, _or if you've had extensive experience with OOP and you know somebody at the same experience level with different opinions_ , you should try very hard to have an open mind and learn something from somebody else. It's very easy to make broad claims that are unsupported by anything but a small set of observations.

Saying "Are we still doing OOP?" is like saying "Are we still using categorization and set theory" which sounds to me a LOT like "Are we still using arithmetic?"

The question is nonsensical.

<comment><USER16> "Saying "Are we still doing OOP?" is like saying "Are we still using categorization and set theory" which sounds to me a LOT like "Are we still using arithmetic?""

OO is hardly equivalent, and _not_ as fundamental (or anywhere near fundamental) as Set Theory, leave alone Arithmetic. The implied equivalence is misleading.

You can use "categorization" and Set theory to design programs with never an Object in sight.

Types and (mathematical) functions are both defined using Set Theory as are Relations (as in relational databases). You could program in Haskell with only types and functions and monads and such with no "object oriented design". The primary difficulty for people who've _only_ done (what some call) "OOP" is forgetting all the OO technique they learned.

At best you could say that objects (for various definitions of "OO") could _also_ be expressed with Sets and (mathematical) functions and such. ALmost every programming language feature could be so expressed, that isn't saying much.

There is no specifically "Object Oriented" super technique that transcends all languages (both OO and non OO) and is applicable in all of them. You'd be cutting against the grain of many languages if you tried to think in OO while using them. LIke Fortan, you can write "OO" in any language and it isn't always a good thing to do.

Not defending the author of TFA ( I don't read these "Ohh technique X or language Y is so outdated" type of articles any more) but the sentence quoted (' "Are we using OO" is lik e "Are we using Set Theory" ') is as generic and misleading as anything the author claimed. Balance in all things.

<comment><USER15> Clarification: you don't need an object to do OOP.

Here's a wonderful example. Let's say you're in C. You start writing code and continuously refactor as you go along. What most people find is, after a good bit of coding and refactoring, you end up with code grouped in modules with public and private functions, public and private data, etc. You can have data abstraction, encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, and inheritance -- all to varying degrees, depending on the problem and solution.

OOP takes that categorization and set work and makes it part of the language. But programming in objects -- true OOP - does not require a language that provides objects. In fact, it's the other way around: because people programmed in objects, languages started providing that capability. Where folks get lost in the woods is where they think the language features are OOP instead of the conceptual work. Languages are just varying levels of syntactic sugar on top of the core tools.

Hope that clears it up for you

<comment><USER16> " But programming in objects -- true OOP - does not require a language that provides objects. "

Without getting into some mystical definition of "True OOP" You don't need _any_ OOP to program or design.

"data abstraction, encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, and inheritance"

None of these things (except inheritance maybe) is specific to OOP. All of them occur in all kinds of languages and paradigms with no objects or "OOP".

As to

" (with C programs) after a good bit of coding and refactoring, you end up with code grouped in modules with public and private functions, public and private data, etc. you end up with code grouped in modules with public and private functions, public and private data"

Sure if you refactor that way.

You could also end up with a collection of rules (as in Prolog) , polymorphic types and functions (as in Haskell), communicating processes (Occam/Erlang) etc with no "OOP" anywhere. (unless you want to claim any and all use of polymorphism or abstraction of any kind is indicative of some kind of all pervading mystical "True OOP" technique. There is no "True OOP" underlying all use of (say) abstraction or polymorphism).

I think people who've done only OO or primarily OO are as bad as people who've never done any OO or rarely do any OO in making outrageous claims.

Grandiose claims opposing _or favoring_ specific subsets of programming technique [ example 1 --> "Are we still using OO?WTF" example 2 --> "Saying are we using OO is like saying are we using Arithmetic" don't stand up to scrutiny.

Objects are a useful abstraction. So are functions, logic staements, relations, processes, polymorphic types .. . Each in its place. (and balance in claims ;-) )

<comment><USER15> Plink I'm not really sure what you're going on about here.

Yes, you can refactor in lots of ways. Some rely more on OOP, some on FP, some on rules-based or constraint-based programming, etc. This is my point -- the tools are there regardless of the language features. Some languages just make this easier or more difficult. No mysticism required :)

Objects _are_ a useful abstraction at times, but "object" does not and should not map directly to some language feature. If you think that then perhaps you've done a great job of learning a language and not-so-good-a-job learning OOP.

As fas the "people who've done only OOP" part? I take it you mean me? Dude I've only been doing functional programming in F# for the last couple of years or so. Found that my OOP chops came in very handy with data structures and functional composition. But perhaps you didn't mean me. I'm not sure.

I'm done here. The only reason I took this thread deeper is that there is a useful thing for HN'ers to learn. The tool is bigger (and more useful) than the language. Don't confuse the concept with the application.

<comment> loup-vaillant Looking at this thread, it seems your main disagreement is about the definition of OOP. I won't provide one, mind you. But such disagreements are so widespread that we may want to stop using the term OOP altogether, and only use more narrowly defined terms.

<comment><USER15> No rhetorical trick intended.

It's a definition thing, sure. But it's important to realize that there's no trickery going on here. There's a very important point.

I get this all the time, and from all aspects of software engineering. As an example, it's become quite fashionable to say something along the lines of "use-cases suck!"

However use-case analysis is just a way of thinking about system functionality. Most people, when pressed, actually mean "we hate these monstrous word templates and rigorous bullshit that people make us do and call them use cases"

To which I do not disagree. But that's confusing the application with the tool again. To insist that they are the same is to throw out huge hunks of software engineering simply because a few people got into them and made them overly- complicated and onerous to use.

Or put another way: I'm sure some folks would like to describe OOP in terms of overly-complex class diagrams, lots of wiring, un-manageable systems, yadda yadda. Some other folks would like to describe OOP in terms of small systems pragmatically created bottom-up. It can be any or all of that. OOP is actually constructing solution code in a pattern that supports encapsulation, polymorphism, information hiding, etc. The _idea_ is a conceptual tool, a code construction pattern of thinking. The _implementation_ can be all sorts of things. Various implementations suck to more or less degree. But that's really not important. What's important is whether this tool is useful right now, do I know how to use it, and which parts work and which parts get in the way of where I'm going.

I understand that this can sound like sophistry, but it's not.

<comment><USER17> _OOP is actually constructing solution code in a pattern that supports encapsulation, polymorphism, information hiding, etc. The idea is a conceptual tool, a code construction pattern of thinking._

Yeah except Alan Kay, you know that guy who invented OOP, says everything you mention there is the overly complex BS unOOP. OOP is late binding and message passing. It isn't the hair splitting you seem to think it is, it truly different philosophies about programming. What you are calling OOP is more like Structured Programming Redux, strong on the structure and light on the dynamic message passing and late binding.

<comment><USER15> Alan Kay? Well gee, you should have said something. Here I was using working definitions and Alan Kay already had the answer.

Either you understand how silly you sound or you do not. I suspect the latter. Perhaps you and Alan could continue the discussion.

<comment><USER17> What can I say a silly response to a silly post. Information hiding, encapsulation,polymorphism, have been Software Engineering principles before OOP was invented Using X == good software engineering then X is the true definition of OOP no matter how you program it, and all that bad OOP code is just wolves in OOP clothing is humorous. Good clean structured code may look similar to OOP code. If the author was not Oriented on Objects then it isn't OOP code. OO is more about how you get there than where you end up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes, next question?</comment>


Pfizer blocks drugs from being used in lethal injections - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/13/health/pfizer-death-penalty-drugs/ <comment><USER2> The way we do lethal injection is weird and over-engineered anyway. They use three chemicals to do what we routinely do to dogs with one, and even then it could be done quite humanely with just a sealed room and a tank of nitrogen.

<comment><USER3> Or carbon monoxide. Odorless, undetectable, the body thinks it's oxygen so there's no sense of being asphyxiated.

<comment><USER4> > Or carbon monoxide

You don't even need CO, any inert gas other than CO2 will do as long as you remove the oxygen (nitrogen is convenient as the atmosphere is already mostly nitrogen)

> the body thinks it's oxygen so there's no sense of being asphyxiated.

CO does compete with O2 which kills you, but the reason the body doesn't react is it basically doesn't react to anything other than CO2 blood levels. You can asphyxiate with argon, butane, nitrogen, helium, krypton, etc… and not realise it as long as CO2 partial pressure doesn't rise.

<comment><USER5> CO is dangerous because you _don 't_ need to remove the O2 from a room to be lethal.

All the other gases cause asphyxiation by taking the place of oxygen in the air. So once you leave the room, you'll be fine.

CO is dangerous because it takes the place of oxygen in the blood and it has a stronger attraction to hemoglobin than oxygen. So get enough CO in your blood and your organs suffocate, even if you are put in a pure O2 environment right away.

<comment><USER4> > CO is dangerous because you don't need to remove the O2 from a room to be > lethal.

Which is relevant… how? The thread isn't about CO poisoning compared to other modes of asphyxiation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not clear from the title, but this seems to apply to injections used for murder (capital punishment), not euthanasia.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't see any comments on the question of whether a commercial entity has legal standing to control the use of products it sells. A commercial entity relies on the legal system to enforce any restrictions, so this amounts to a question of whether the public should facilitate and subsidize the political wishes of a commercial entity. I think not, just as the taxpayers should not be subsidizing inadequate wages paid by companies like Walmart.

Export laws, being enacted and enforced by a government, are a different matter, of course.

I'm strongly opposed to the death penalty, for both moral and practical reasons. This story is another reminder for me on how the functions of government have been co-opted for private gain. This kind of thing makes everyone poorer.

<comment><USER8> The article is highly misleading in this respect. The restrictions are contractual and imposed upon Pfizer's distributors/resalers. State governments must also certify that purchases won't be used for executions. Likely the only consequence for violations is being blacklisted by Pfizer.

The original press release[1] states:

> Pfizer's distribution restriction limits the sale of these seven products to > a select group of wholesalers, distributors, and direct purchasers under the > condition that they will not resell these products to correctional > institutions for use in lethal injections. Government purchasing entities > must certify that products they purchase or otherwise acquire are used only > for medically prescribed patient care and not for any penal purposes. Pfizer > further requires that these Government purchasers certify that the product > is for "own use" and will not resell or otherwise provide the restricted > products to any other party.

> Pfizer will consistently monitor the distribution of these seven products, > act upon findings that reveal noncompliance, and modify policies when > necessary to remain consistent with our stated position against the improper > use of our products in lethal injections. Importantly, this distribution > system is also designed to ensure that these critical medications will > remain immediately available to those patients who rely on them every day.

[1]: [http://www.pfizer.com/files/b2b/GlobalPolicyPaperLethalInjec...](http://www.pfizer.com/files/b2b/GlobalPolicyPaperLethalInjection.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's some more reading on the subject of the lethal injection drug shortage, including a per-state breakdown:

[https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the- drug-s...](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the-drug- shortage-has-slowed-the-death-penalty-treadmill)

</comment><comment><USER10> Slightly OT: out of curiosity, anyone knows what's being used for legal Euthanasia, e.g. in the Netherlands?

<comment><USER11> A barbiturate (a drug that acts as central nervous system depressant, i.e. sodium thiopental or propofol) in combination with a muscle relaxant. Death cause: oxygen deficiency, within seconds.

Source: [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasie](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasie) (dutch)

<comment><USER12> Minor correction propofol is not a barbiturate. They also tend to use longer acting barbiturates. Sodium thiopentol wears off after 10-15 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting. I wonder if this is revenge for DOT blocking the Allergan deal.

Good for Pfizer for showing some cajones.

<comment><USER14> > Good for Pfizer for showing some cajones.

Well, you could also view this from the opposite angle: if they didn't block this, how good would it look on them?

Also, I can't help but wonder what their stance would be if the "execution" market was much larger.

Anyway, I still applaud this move of course, that is not the point.

<comment><USER15> I imagined drug commercials for execution drugs.

Side effects include dizziness, headaches, vomiting, and on rare occasions, not-death.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meta: How does this reach front page with 4 points?

<comment><USER10> You could call it the "Sunday effect".

<comment><USER17> This happens routinely on weekdays too. Number of points is not indicative of something appearing on the frontpage. I don't know what is though, which makes me suspicious of hidden agendas.

<comment><USER18> The admins here do promote stories to the front page when they want it to get more views.</comment></comment></comment></comment>