NextCloud, a security analysis - <AUTHOR> https://ownyourbits.com/2017/03/25/nextcloud-a-security-analysis/ <comment><USER2> I really don't understand what this article is trying to say. About 2/3 of it seems to be an explanation of an SSL Labs scan. It's good to get an SSL Labs checkup for your site, but that's like 0.5% of your overall security problem.

<comment><USER3> Off your head, what is your recommendation / checklist for people running servers? He covers fail2ban as well

<comment><USER4> An audit is only around $6k. If you can afford one, you should get one.

<comment><USER5> $6k covers about 3 days of effort by a single security auditor, which barely scratches the surface for a large application like NextCloud. Sorry, security is expensive :-/.

You can save yourself some headache by using best practices and clearing away all the low hanging fruit before contracting with an expert. For example, but deploying on HHVM, aggressively using static analysis tools and clearing up issues that lead to compiler warnings, and running external application vulnerability scans from things like local Burp Pro or the hosted Tinfoil Security.

<comment><USER4> The question was about people running their own webapps. $6k is a reasonable price for a smaller project.

<comment><USER2> There aren't many non-brochure-ware applications I can imagine getting audited in 3 days. 2 person/weeks is a small app pentest project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> None of this concerns me for an application like NextCloud. Deploying TLS properly is table stakes. What does concern me: this app is written in PHP, famous for such a horrific design that it frequently leads developers down dangerous code paths that result in remotely exploitable bugs.

Seriously WTF are the PHP devs smoking? Just look at these tables: [https://secure.php.net/manual/en/types.comparisons.php](https://secure.php.net/manual/en/types.comparisons.php)

Given the size of the codebase and the insecure language and frameworks it's built on, I would consider a NextCloud instance that touches the internet to be at enormous risk of compromise.

If you want to investigate my gut there are a million and one things having to do with its architecture and implementation that you want to look into. None of those things involve what TLS cipher suites it uses.

<comment><USER6> Just as a remark, we run a bug bounty program at [https://hackerone.com/nextcloud](https://hackerone.com/nextcloud) offering up to $5,000 for Remote Code Executions.

If someone here feels challenged: We look forward to your reports. :)

<comment><USER7> This is a great response :-) Especially to people who "claim" PHP is hackable with no follow through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to use all these Sync programs, but each of them had their own issues (or missing features). So I eventually switched to regular rsync + ssh.

The upside is that you don't have to install much serverside.

<comment><USER9> The nice thing with nextcloud is it allows you to share to the public, just like dropbox but self hosted.

<comment><USER10> That just means you rsync to the public www directory instead. :)

<comment><USER11> So your rsync+ssh solution to one-click share-a-link that is one-time use or with an expiration date is what?

<comment><USER10> The knowledge that one time links are a terrible means of access control.

<comment><USER11> Ahh, the old "I don't have a response so I'll just say the feature you use everyday is 'terrible'". The market would suggest you are completely wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NIST to redefine the kilogram based on a fundamental universal constant - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/07/05/scientists-are-about-to-change-what-a-kilogram-is-thats-massive <comment><USER2> _> When the International Committee for Weights and Measures announced that it would reconsider the kilogram definition, it said it would require three measurements with uncertainties below 50 parts per billion, and one below 20 ppb. But with the new NIST measurement, the world now has at least three experiments below 20 ppb — another was conducted by a Canadian team using a Kibble balance, the third by an international group that calculates the Planck constant based on the number of atoms in a sphere of pure silicon._

 _> The weights and measures committee will meet this month to establish a global value for Planck's constant by averaging the values calculated at NIST and other labs. And in 2018, at the next General Conference on Weights and Measures, the scientific community will draft a resolution to redefine kilogram based on this constant._

Looks like the current title "NIST to redefine the kilogram based on a fundamental universal constant" is confusing because it implies that NIST defines kilogram but it's International Committee's for Weights and Measures job.

</comment><comment><USER3> The kilogram is not the only unit that will be redefined based on universal constants. The seven base units[0] will transition to being based on elementary charge and the Planck, Boltzmann, and Avogadro constants[1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_base_unit#Seven_SI_base_uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_base_unit#Seven_SI_base_units)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_redefinition_of_SI_ba...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_redefinition_of_SI_base_units)

<comment><USER4> Slightly off-topic, but looking at the temperature section in your second link reminded me of the latest video from Linus Tech Tips[1] where he gets bashed for using the expression "degrees Kelvin". Personally, I don't see the problem. Since a kelvin is a hundredth of the difference between boiling and freezing temperatures of water, there is a notion of scale so the term "degrees" makes sense.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60OkanvToFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60OkanvToFI)

<comment><USER5> Yes, in the same way that a half-marathon is 13 degrees mile long.

<comment><USER6> The half-marathon is a race that commemorates the Greek soldier who ran halfway from Marathon to Athens after the Battle of Marathon.

<comment><USER5> Your username is "analog31".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Scientists don't know whether the BIPM prototype is losing mass, perhaps > because of loss of impurities in the metals, or if the witnesses are gaining > mass by accumulating contaminants.

Can we stop this nonsense? It would be a big problem if it were true, but it isn't. It's the later (contamination weight gain) and we have fairly good understanding of what's going on. For example, see [https://phys.org/news/2013-01-kilogram- weight.html](https://phys.org/news/2013-01-kilogram-weight.html)

<comment><USER8> As Veritasium explains [0], _all_ of the reference kilograms have drifted, and some appear to weigh _less_ than they used to. So even if we know the precise mechanism of action of the drift, it doesn't help with the fact that our measurements are less reliable than they used to be.

Of course, what's probably happened is that our measuring tools have gotten more accurate!

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMByI4s-D-Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMByI4s-D-Y)

<comment><USER9> The kilogram is a measure of mass, not weight which is a measure of force. In order to really figure out mass, I'd think the localized gravity has to be accounted for. e.g. GRACE maps gravity variation around the earth by measuring the acceleration difference between a pair of satellites.

<comment><USER10> The measurements were taken at the same place at around the same time, so fluctuations in local gravity should have been negligible compared to actual mass fluctuations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is an alternate definition using a sphere of silicon with N atoms:

[https://www.nist.gov/physical-measurement- laboratory/silicon...](https://www.nist.gov/physical-measurement- laboratory/silicon-spheres-and-international-avogadro-project)

What's really need though is a universal, stable over eons, single standard for time, length, and mass. I believe time is N cycles of an excited sodium (light) emission. Length is N wavelengths of that same emission in a vacuum. Mass would be N atoms.

So why are they not using a single element to define everything? Is it a matter of finding the proper element that is easy to excite and stable enough (chemically and atomically) over the long term? Sodium is very reactive and easy to excite. Silicon is probably the opposite.

<comment><USER12> A second (time) is already defined on cesium transition, a meter (length) is defined as a fraction of the distance light travels in a second. Both things which we can accurately measure for some time now, and which universal and stable over eons.

What is the problem that would be solved by switching to a single element?

<comment><USER11> I don't recall. I just read some article recently about trying to define time and length with sodium; trying to define everything with a single element that is very common. Of course it could also have been a 50 year old Asimov book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting fact: this is important for US too, because pound is defined as exactly 0.45359237 kg ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass)#Current_use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_\(mass\)#Current_use))

<comment><USER14> It's kind of not important because nobody measures the kinds of things that require the level of precision applied to the kilogram definition using pounds.

<comment><USER15> I was about to argue that the illegal drug trade might be a counter-example, but haven't they gone metric, too?

<comment><USER16> Even if they did use the imperial system, no drug dealer is going to care about a change in the 8th decimal place of the definition of the pound.

<comment><USER17> Carfentanil is LD50 at 0.05mg. Don't be Bill Gates, 640KB is not enough for everyone and the 8th decimal of the pound is a lethal dose of Carfentanil.

<comment><USER18> Wait no this doesn't make sense. It's not an 8th decimal of a pound, it's an 8th decimal of _what you 're measuring_. If you're measuring out a pound of Carfentanil you might be off by 0.05mg, but if you're measuring a dose you'll actually take, you won't.

<comment><USER17> It still stands that a LD50 of Carfentanil is able to be estimated away because of the change in the precision of a pound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's a little ironic that the article expressed the value of Planck's constant using an SI Unit with kilograms.

> _Based on 16 months ' worth of measurements, it calculated Planck's constant > to be 6.626069934 x 10−34 kg∙m2/s._

<comment><USER20> Right - can somebody explain how this unit of kg-m2/s (weight diffusion? work- seconds?) can be used to define weight? Seem circular.

<comment><USER21> Right now the mass of the kilogram prototype is _defined_ to be exactly 1 kg. If someone adds or removes matter from the prototype, then the numerical value we assign to the mass of _everything else_ in the world would change, but the prototype would remain 1 kg. On the other hand, currently, the value of Planck's constant is known only to a certain level of accuracy.

Under the new system, Planck's constant would be defined to be exactly 6.626070040e−34 kg.m^2.s^-1, with no error bars, and the prototype would no longer be exactly 1 kg. If we refine our estimate for the physical value of Planck's constant, its numerical value of 6.626070040e−34 kg.m^2.s^-1 _would not change_ , but the numerical value for everything's mass would.

This definition of 1 kg requires we first define 1 m and 1 s, but there are already good definitions for these quantities based on fundamental physical properties (namely, the speed of light and the frequency of the transition between the two hyperfine levels of ground state of the caesium-133 atom).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I always get a kick out of this:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Pr...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Prototype_mass_drifts.jpg/399px- Prototype_mass_drifts.jpg)

<comment><USER23> context?

<comment><USER22> It's how the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram and its copies have drifted over time:

[http://www.bipm.org/en/bipm/mass/ipk/](http://www.bipm.org/en/bipm/mass/ipk/) (verifications tab)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why is the kilogram the base unit and not the gram?

<comment><USER25> Good question. Apparently, the unit (mass of 1 litre of water at the ice point) was supposed to be called "grave", but then it was considered that most measurements would be for much smaller amounts, and so it was switched to the gramme, but then for the definition they stuck to the original idea, now re- christened kg.

I don't quite understand this, as they could've defined it to be the mass of one cubic centimetre of water, rather than a cubic decimetre of water. Or they could've said that the unit is gram, and 1 g is 1/1000 of the mass of this artefact.

I've also read stories that revolutionaries objected to the name "grave", as it is close to _Grave_ (French), _Graf_ (German), that is, the title of nobility (anathema for the Republicans of the French Revolution). Thus, instead of 1 grave we have 1 kilogram.

At any rate, it was all rather messy and political, as the delightful book _Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet_ by John Bemelmans Marciano recounts.

See also precisely this question at Physics StackExchange:

[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/64562/why- metric...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/64562/why-metric- system-uses-kilogram-as-a-basic-si-unit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> They define it based on Planck's constant, so the results also depends on the definition of meter and seconds if I understand it correctly.

Would it have been possible to define it as the weight of N amount of electrons (assuming all electrons have the exact same weight under all circumstances) or another fundamental particle?

EDIT: it would be the weight of 9.10938356e31 electrons at rest

<comment><USER27> One way has been by counting silicon atoms in a nearly-perfect spherical crystal.

[http://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.4921240](http://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.4921240)

<comment><USER28> And they are using this as a definition for the unity of atomic mass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Always thought why didn't we have some super complex standard for weight when we had one for length and time. Now my thoughts have become reality. Though since I am non sciencey, It makes me ask Why so long?

<comment><USER30> The article explains, albeit it's maybe not very obvious if you aren't acquanited with metrology.

> So in 2014, at the quadrennial General Conference on Weights and Measures > (yep, that's a thing), the scientific community resolved to redefine the > kilogram based on Planck's constant, a value from quantum mechanics that > describes the packets energy comes in. If physicists could get a good enough > measure of Planck's constant, the committee would calculate a kilogram from > that value.

> "But it's a very difficult constant to measure," Pratt said. He would know: > He and his colleagues at NIST have spent much of the past few years trying > to come up with a number accurate and precise enough to please the finicky > physics community.

Basically, it was hard to measure Planck's constant precisely enough to be as precise as the old standard. For compatibility reasons, the way this usually works is that they will measure Planck's constant and then define the kilogram so that `(k * Planck's constant) = (old mass of the kilogram)`, where `k` is whatever constant that makes this work out. To do this properly, you need to be able to measure Planck's constant with the same level of precision (and accuracy) as the old mass of the kilogram was known. Apparently this wasn't easy, presumably because Planck's constant is very small.

<comment><USER29> I used to wonder (basically my physics class where they took an entire class about dimensions and verification based on that. Now I know better.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> [https://www.wired.com/2011/09/ff_kilogram/](https://www.wired.com/2011/09/ff_kilogram/)

</comment><comment><USER32> It does not make sense, practically. So they'll be using a balance with multiple moving parts made of multiple minerals that have to be precisely calibrated with margins of error adding up, instead of a simple platinum cylinder?

Although, it makes sense politically

<comment><USER33> The problem with a physical standard like that is that you can't (easily) ship it to labs all over the world so that they can calibrate to it. At least when you use fundamental constants, each lab can set up their own equipment to produce the correct measurement.

Also, anything physical will shed atoms, which will affect the mass.

<comment><USER34> Or, indeed, get coated in atmospheric gunk.

[https://www.wired.com/2013/01/keeping-kilogram- constant/](https://www.wired.com/2013/01/keeping-kilogram-constant/)

> Cumpson suspects that because the kilos living in national labs have been > retrieved and handled more frequently than the international kilo, more > carbon-containing contaminants have built up on them over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ha, the irony! The _USA_ 's NIST defines a SI unit to the rest of the world; meanwhile, most of citizens don't know what it is.

<comment><USER36> > Ha, the irony! The USA's NIST defines a SI unit to the rest of the world; > meanwhile, most of citizens don't know what it is.

...except actually it's the International Committee for Weights and Measures.

However I will help you retain your justifiable sense of ironic superiority: the US is one of the 17 original signatories to the metre convention (in May 1875: [http://www.bipm.org/en/about-us/member- states/original_seven...](http://www.bipm.org/en/about-us/member- states/original_seventeen.html)). Also all the US conventional units have been based on the SI metre and kilogramme since 1959. And of course the metric system is familiar to any American in the military and/or who uses illegal drugs.

Although its not part of the BIPM, my favorite such standards organization is the International Earth Rotation Service (justified paying my taxes -- what if they stopped???). Sadly they recently renamed themselves "International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service"

Apropos of little: I used to live quite close (a couple of hundred metres) to an official metre, as there is one on the wall across the street from the French Senate. When the system was originally promulgated, markers were erected around France; you could bring something (piece of string or whatnot) and make your "own" metre to bring home and measure things. There are two or three of them still extant.

<comment><USER35> Submission title says "NIST".

> _and /or who uses illegal drugs._

:)

<comment><USER36> Yes, but the article is clear. The headline is from the Washington Post. The apparatus itself was indeed developed by NIST.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> That's also a dreadful pun.

<comment><USER38> For those who missed it, the original submission title (from the article) was "Scientists are about to change what a kilogram is. That's massive."

<comment><USER39> Thank you, that _is_ awful. I love it.

<comment><USER40> The last line of the article is also an awful groaner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> An interesting (banned) TEDx talk by Rupert Sheldrake, one part on the changing "fundamental constants", starting here:

[https://youtu.be/JKHUaNAxsTg?t=591](https://youtu.be/JKHUaNAxsTg?t=591)

The other parts are a bit "woo" and I'm sure would be laughed at by the HN crowd. But his points about fundamental "constants" changing, and the metrologists' dogmatic (really, anti-scientific) response, are worth pondering.

<comment><USER42> Just in case folks are unaware, this is the parapsychology guy that believes the following:

> Sheldrake's morphic resonance hypothesis posits that "memory is inherent in > nature" and that "natural systems, such as termite colonies, or pigeons, or > orchid plants, or insulin molecules, inherit a collective memory from all > previous things of their kind" ... Sheldrake proposes that it is also > responsible for "telepathy-type interconnections between organisms". His > advocacy of the idea encompasses paranormal subjects such as precognition, > telepathy and the psychic staring effect as well as unconventional > explanations of standard subjects in biology such as development, > inheritance, and memory.

The reason his TED talk was pulled is because he's a crank, and the entire talk is a confused defense of pure BS.

<comment><USER41> Yes, but did you watch the section on fundamental constants? Even if he's a crank, his questions are valid, and metrologists who define away problems with fundamental constant measurements are to be questioned.</comment></comment></comment>


Special spots in empty space might hold the key to interplanetary exploration - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/3/in-transit/point-and-shoot

<comment><USER2> This is strongly related to the Interplanetary Transport Network, so I've submitted a link to that in case people want to discuss the two topics separately:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8577596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8577596)

The basic idea is that multiple moving gravity wells combine in strange ways creating lumps and bumps, and we can move around with much less effort and much less fuel than expected. The "Gravity Assist"[0] idea is just the beginning.

An interesting thing is that we can perform gravity assists around Lagrange points, effectively bouncing off (or around) things that aren't there.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist)

<comment><USER3> Given that the goal of a gravity assist is not to hit the source of the gravity well, how is using a lagrange point going to be more useful than using a planet?

The usefulness of the technique for moving a satellite around earth seems clear (for unmanned probes). The idea of using this for manned flight seems ridiculous (it's not like Arthur C. Clarke didn't know about Lagrange points). The idea of sticking a space station at Earth/Moon L1 or whatever is ridiculous. You need to decellerate into the point since it's (at best) metastable, so there's a huge practical downside. Firing your lump of ice or aluminum at a large gravity well with decent precision seems much more practical.

<comment><USER4> The main point of ITN is that it is very low energy, at a cost of being slow. You wouldn't use it for manned missions. You'd use it for unmanned missions, including cargo transport to support manned missions.

For instance, suppose you have established a mining and manufacturing operation on the Moon, and want to start a long term project to establish a permanent Mars base. You can start out by putting together a bunch of supplies that Mars base will need, launching that supply package into the Earth's orbit, moving it to an appropriate Earth/Sun Lagrange point, and then nudging it into an unstable orbit that intercepts an unstable orbit around a Mars/Sun Lagrange point. When the package reaches that point, another nudge transfers it to that second unstable orbit, where it eventually reaches a Mars/Sun Lagrange point, from which it can move to Mars.

The only step in that trip that uses a lot of energy is the launch to get away from the Moon. All the rest of the maneuvers (moving to/from Lagrange points, entering and exiting the unstable orbits, and switching between the unstable orbits) take very little energy.

It would take a while to get there...I don't recall for sure, but I think it is something around 3 years.

You make the first package large, with enough supplies to support a Mars base for 6 months or more. Then every 3 months you launch another package.

When the first package arrives successfully at Mars, and the other packages in the pipeline are in good shape, you launch your manned mission to actually establish the base.

Note that the manned mission only needs to carry enough food, air, and water for the trip itself. Same goes for fuel--it only needs enough fuel to get to Mars. Fuel and supplies for a return trip can be included in the supply packages coming in on the ITN.

(You can do this starting from the Earth instead of the Moon, of course, but it takes a lot less energy to get from the Moon to an Earth/Sun Lagrange point than from the Earth, so it is probably worth getting mining and manufacturing set up on the Moon first and then making that the starting point for establishing bases elsewhere).

<comment><USER3> Don't you need to decelerate into the Lagrange point? If so, why not just use conventional gravity assist to get it to Mars faster?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Voyages on low-energy transfer orbits last decades, but you can send really heavy probes that would be impossible to fly on traditional trajectories.

This makes it into a political problem. Under the US system the budget for space exploration is allocated every year. All other governments allocate funds for the whole mission at the point when it is approved.

No government will commit funds for a flagship mission when they know that the US may pull out halfway through the project. It has happened before with Galileo, and no one will run the risk of it happening again, especially in the present political climate.

<comment><USER6> > No government will commit funds for a flagship mission when they know that > the US may pull out halfway through the project. It has happened before with > Galileo, and no one will run the risk of it happening again, especially in > the present political climate

Could you explain what you mean here? Are you talking about international collaborative missions? Galileo was a successful NASA spacecraft to Jupiter that, as far as I can tell, was a fully American financed mission.

Or maybe you're thinking of the Europa Jupiter System Mission, which was a NASA-ESA mission to Jupiter recently crippled by NASA budget cuts? That seems like a poor example, since only about $100 million or less had been spent on a mission that would have cost $6 billion (of which nearly $5 billion would have been American dollars).

<comment><USER5> Part of the scientific payload was European. The European collaborators were not impressed with the delays on NASA's part. The combined Galileo/Ulysses disaster was what cured ESA of signing Memoranda of Understanding.</comment></comment></comment>


Quantum Foam - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foam <comment><USER2> If we are being simulated on an analog computer this could be an effect of the thermal nose :)</comment>


Meet the first 5 companies at Toronto's Extreme Startups - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/15/meet-the-first-5-companies-to-join-toronto-incubator-extreme-startups/

<comment><USER2> Where is Toronto?</comment>


Paul Graham's (defunct) Blog - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20070608081258/http://paulgraham.infogami.com/blog/

<comment><USER2> A bone tossed to the writers in the crowd :)

"Switching back to writing has confirmed something I've always suspected: writing is harder than hacking. They're both hard to do well, but writing has an additional element of panic that isn't there in hacking."

<comment><USER3> You also know when code "works".

It's much more difficult to know if writing works.

Though both are never bug-free.

<comment><USER4> This is a key point.

Building stuff is easy. The difficulty lies in evaluating what you build.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like to read his essays on paulgraham.com better anyway. Having to check both feeds (you use the unofficial rss feed for pg.com right?) was just annoying.

</comment><comment><USER4> I get pissed when people break permalinks.</comment>


Ask HN: What Mobile Do You Have? - <AUTHOR> Planning on changing & interested to know others recommendations. <comment><USER2> Moto g series is good if you are looking at budget smartphones. My suggestion don't invest on high end smartphones - the ROI is poor. Add to it, the amount of time you end up wasting on it.

Unless you are into sales / marketing where you are required to be available on phone / emails etc it's not worth investing in high end smartphones.

Just sharing an opinion.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To add, I've been a happy iPhone user since the 3 came out but the iPhone outright cost / battery life has become an issue for me.

I generally use SMS, calls, Spotify, occasionally camera - the extra functionality of the latest iPhones go not seem worth it for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Going to throw it out there... happy W10M user.

Lumia 1520 / Lumia 930.

</comment><comment><USER4> Lenovo P2, the king of smartphone battery life</comment>


When Cancer Was Conquerable - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/archives/2018/05/12/when-cancer-was-conquerable/ <comment><USER3> > _More radically, it might be possible to repeal the 1962 Kefauver-Harris > amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a provision that > requires drug developers to prove a medication 's efficacy (rather than just > its safety) before it can receive FDA approval. Since this more stringent > authorization process was enacted, the average number of new drugs > greenlighted per year has dropped by more than half, while the death rate > from drug toxicity stayed constant. The additional regulation has produced > stagnation, in other words, with no upside in terms of improved safety._

If that were to happen, we can expect that the drug market would become like the supplement market: full of pseudo-science and products that do nothing. Right now, supplement makers are prohibited from making specific medical claims; they can say something like "gives you energy," but they can't say "cures cancer." The only reason they _don 't_ is because they legally _can 't_. (And even then they sometimes do, and sometimes get away with it.) If they were suddenly allowed to, we would not get a flood of new drugs from the current pharmaceutical companies. We would get a flood of sugar pills from the current supplement companies.

The "since" part of the paragraph is also a bit of non-sequitur. Before and after the 1962 provision, drug companies had to prove safety, so it's not a surprise the death rate from drug toxicity stayed constant. Proving efficacy is about preventing companies from exploiting the public by selling stuff that has no hope of ever working as advertised.

The blind spot of proposals like this is that they assume good-faith actors acting rationally. They completely ignore bad-faith actors willing to sociopathically exploit people.

<comment><USER4> How does this act relate to drugs targeted to specific genetic markers?

I think we're moving into an era when we need to consider that everybody is different, and a lot of cancers are different. This isn't like curing a bacteria, where (mostly) one-size fits all.

I wonder: is it possible to bring a drug to market that is ineffective and sometimes fatal to most people without a genetic marker, but is safe and will cure cancer for those with the marker?

<comment><USER5> > I wonder: is it possible to bring a drug to market that is ineffective and > sometimes fatal to most people without a genetic marker

We already do this. A large class of both antipsychotics and antidepressants require certain genes in order to metabolize properly and have the intended effect, instead of just giving a bunch of side effects with no benefit.

These genes are not universal and not evenly distributed; people of certain ethnic backgrounds are dramatically less likely to have the requisite genes, which means that most antipsychotics and antidepressants literally don't work on them.

<comment><USER6> Do you have a citation for this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Cancer deaths have fallen by a total of just 5 percent since 1950.

This is suuuuper misleading, to the point where I'm thinking that the author has an agenda.

Cancer _deaths_ is the wrong metric to use, since population is always increasing and the proportion of people getting cancer is also changing over time.

You want to look at the cancer death _rate_ instead, from 1991 to 2015 the cancer death rate decreased by _26%_. It's also really important to take into account that mortality rates are _vastly_ different across different types of cancers and across genders -- in that same time period, the death rate for males with lung cancer decreased by 45%! [2]

Again, this article is misleading and probably has an agenda behind it. If you want to learn more about the history of cancer treatment, _The Emperor of All Maladies_ is a great book.

[1] [https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/understanding-cancer- deat...](https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/understanding-cancer-death- rates.html) [2] [https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/facts-and- figures-2018-ra...](https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/facts-and- figures-2018-rate-of-deaths-from-cancer-continues-decline.html)

<comment><USER8> Scott Alexander (Slatestarcodex) had a post about this earlier this month:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/08/01/cancer-progress-much- mo...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/08/01/cancer-progress-much-more-than- you-wanted-to-know/)

The gist of the post was that cancer rates since 1990 have gone down primarily because smoking has declined, not because cancer treatment has improved.

<comment><USER7> Which isn't related to cancer death _rates_ , which is the proportion of people who die from cancer out of the population of people that have cancer.

<comment><USER9> It touches on that, too. It's also a hard metric to work with because we're getting better at _detecting_ cancers, including more benign and earlier stage ones. I believe the SSC post found that most of the improvement in cancer mortality was more an artifact of detection than actual improvements in care. i.e.: if you look _only_ at equivalent Stage 4 cancers, then the death rate from there hasn't changed much over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lost my son at 12 years old in 2013 (Bone Cancer) and lost my sister when she was 15 in 1996 (Brain Cancer). The fight for pediatric cancer research funding is worse. If you have a chemo for kids (All of kids cells are growing which makes it much more difficult to fight cancer) it has less side-effects and is effective for adults. If you have a new adult chemo it doesn't mean nothing for Pediatric. We went over 20+ years without one new Chemo till St. Baldrick's funded chemo for Neroblastoma came out a few years ago.

Bone Cancer does have funding, from dog owners. Bone Cancer my son has hasn't had a change in survival rates in 35 years. Fortuitously people have greater hope for a cure for dogs then sick kids and are putting millions into bone cancer research and we hope that once they finally have something we can start the 10 year process of testing for kids.

We wouldn't have done the trial for bone cancer. Reason is that when your in a trial you have to leave the tumor in the body so they can see the effectiveness. Bone cancer is extremely painful and is only curable through surgery. Why would anyone agree to leaving the painful hard tumor in your kids body???

My son had a 15% chance of surviving 5 years when he was diagnosed with bone cancer (It was in his whole left femur and both lungs, bone cancer for some reason grows in your lungs so you have crazy bone cells growing in your lungs). He made it past 4.5 years, but it grew into both legs, his neck, and hip and had countless surgeries, radiation and chemo and it all sucked. That the funding isn't there is a constant thought in your brain at all times. Heck American Cancer Society (Largest on the planet) gave a penny per dollar raised to pediatric cancer research and then cut funding to kids camps and family resources about 7 years ago so they could focus on adult research. They finally agreed to stop using pictures of kids sick on their fund raising efforts. So yeah it is frustrating.

<comment><USER11> You touch on the twisted point about medicine for dogs: there are often lots more treatments for them, at least as many as for humans. But this isnt because of funding. it is because nearly ever human treatmemt was once tested on dogs. And they arent all pets... or even sick. Sometimes the path to human testing leads through dark places.

<comment><USER12> Uh no, they definitely have specific research facilities for animal treatment. We have a for profit healthcare system, and in that system it goes: Wealthy people > Wealthy peoples pets > poor people.

<comment><USER10> We had the best medical experience. We had awesome doctors and awesome hospital.

I have to say my son was adopted. He was a dirt poor kid who was neglected and had serious mental health issues due to his enviroment. My son got his femur replaced by one of the best pediatric orthopedic surgeons. His surgeon actually invested the procedure where they replace your femur bone instead of an removing the leg at the hip. We also got to stay at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and stay at the Ronald McDonald House (This is where it actually was founded).

I figure I will share this video of him since I mentioned his Mental Health issues. My kid was so resilient and he got better. His body didn't get healed but his heart and mind is the biggest miracle I have ever witnessed.

[https://vimeo.com/65522201](https://vimeo.com/65522201)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > One proposal, developed by American economist Bartley Madden, is "free-to- > choose medicine." Once drugs have passed Phase I trials demonstrating > safety, doctors would be able to prescribe them... > > More radically, it > might be possible to repeal the 1962 Kefauver-Harris amendment to the > Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a provision that requires drug > developers to prove a medication's efficacy (rather than just its safety) > before it can receive FDA approval.

Personally I'd be in favour of letting seriously ill people try whatever they want. However I would not be in favour of allowing companies to charge for drugs which had not yet been proved effective.

Providing drugs for free might give companies more data to help develop (or potentially prove safety, efficacy) but generating revenue here is too open to abuse.

<comment><USER14> >Providing drugs for free might give companies more data to help develop (or potentially prove safety, efficacy)

It's a nice thought, but you generally can't have patients and doctors opting- in for unproven treatments and expect the resulting data to stand up to any sort of scrutiny. To glean useful data, one would require a really, really large-n study population and clear impacts from use of the drug that are so pronounced they drown out nearly all other confounding factors (e.g. studies on the health impact of cigarettes) -- and expecting an unproven, last-resort type drug to attract a study population this large is just unrealistic.

<comment><USER15> It's not just that experiments won't work like that, it's the consequences of experimenting on live human beings ... that is where the real problem lies. These companies don't want the freedom to experiment, they already have that. The technical way to state what they want is permission to do stage 2 trials ... and not be responsible for patient outcomes. If their liver gets reabsorbed (which is one of the more common "oops"es for drug testing), they don't want to pay for 50 years of dialysis plus constant treatments. That's what they're asking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe at the time, from 40's to 70's, (1) there were low hanging fruits. It's reasonable to think the discovery process has become harder and (2) we didn't know much about how a fast clinical trial could go wrong [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide)

<comment><USER17> Yes, this was a ridiculous article. In addition, the FDA actually has fast- track approval for drugs in areas with no good treatment and any drug showing exceptional efficacy will make it through the approval process very quickly.

<comment><USER18> Keep in mind Reason is a libertarian site and approaches every topic with the goal of portraying the modern government always as a roadblock with never any benefit. Every article will be totally one-sided to not mention positive aspects of any government program or agency.

edit: They actually did quickly mention FDA fast-track:

>There have been some moves in the right direction. Between 1992 and 2002, the FDA launched three special programs to allow for faster approval of drugs for certain serious diseases, including cancer. And current FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb shows at least some appetite for further reform.

<comment><USER19> I hear Reason used to be good. My experience with it over the last three years or so is that it's mostly garbage. It's become a lot of narrative confirmation but with little quality reasoning (drink!) or evidence. I don't go there anymore if I can help it.

This law could be terrible, but if that's true, it should be provable without pretending to have data (the safety ratings are the same after non-safety legislation was passed!).

Then there was that one time they published an anti-first amendment screed on the website.

Reason annoys the bejesus out of me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To summarize: two proposals: 1\. Once drugs have passed Phase I trials ... prescribe them 2\. repeal ... a provision that requires drug developers to prove a medication's efficacy

How is this different from Right to Try act? [https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/30/politics/right-to-try- don...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/30/politics/right-to-try-donald- trump/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> >In 1971, three decades after Gilman's discovery, the U.S. government declared a "war on cancer." Since then, we have spent nearly $200 billion in federal money on research to defeat the disease. But we haven't gotten much bang for our buck: Cancer deaths have fallen by a total of just 5 percent since 1950. (In comparison, heart disease deaths are a third of what they were then, thanks to innovations like statins, stents, and bypass surgery.)

People live a lot longer than in 1950, which gives them more years to get cancer. This is why you have to report age-diagnosis-specific outcomes and not merely incidence or prevalence.

</comment><comment><USER22> What is the author even talking about, saying there is no progress in cancer therapy? Hanahan doesn't even mention immunology in the "Hallmarks of Cancer" (that's an influential review article from 2000), and less than ten years later it's a huge field of research, with several very powerful drugs in the clinic.

<comment><USER23> He looks at it empirically

> Cancer deaths have fallen by a total of just 5 percent since 1950. (In > comparison, heart disease deaths are a third of what they were then, thanks > to innovations like statins, stents, and bypass surgery.)

Not sure if this takes into account x year survival rates.

<comment><USER24> That was my first thought. What about early detection and treatment?

There's a saying "live long enough and you'll die of cancer".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article could have done a post-mortem of the 20-year taxol approval. It sounds obviously wrong, but I'd like to know how it could be done right.

Cancer can be very complex, and treatment based on assumptions can shorten lives and kill fertility when another treatment would have been appropriate.

A webcomic author updated their blog about their experience: [https://www.erfworld.com/blog/view/60504/rob-lindas-1st- anni...](https://www.erfworld.com/blog/view/60504/rob-lindas-1st-anniversary)

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the whole reason why cancer deaths aren't receding as fast as we'd like them to is exactly that heart disease deaths, and violent deaths (anything from murder to suicide to a car accident) are receding quickly. Therefore, people live longer, and get cancer with higher probability.

<comment><USER18> Right, it would make much more sense to talk about cancer diagnosis or survivability by a certain age, like 50 or 60. By 70-90 most people have been exposed to so many carcinogens the likelihood of some sort of cancer is near guaranteed.

<comment><USER27> It's not even carcinogens. Cellular decay is a thing. As we age, our genetics start breaking down due to imperfect copying. Cancer is basically just bugs in DNA's software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Progress is slow because much of the long hanging fruit has been picked

Cancer is much more difficult and complicated than other types of diseases

Clinical trials bypass the FDA but very seldom result in cures or improved survival. It's not like people with advanced cancer are being denied experimental treatments, but the problem is for every success that gets media attention, the vast majority of these treatments do nothing or are even harmful

<comment><USER29> >"Progress is slow because much of the long hanging fruit has been picked

Cancer is much more difficult and complicated than other types of diseases"

Or maybe the people researching it haven't been doing a very good job and have generated a bunch of irreproducible (even in principle) results: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17702380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17702380)

Trying to make sense of a topic when the literature is filled with incorrect facts would be quite difficult and complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's actually really easy force research to move faster, but to do so people basically must throw caution to the wind, and gamble with the possibility of extremely unpleasant outcomes, on top of also not surviving.

Being less safe is as simple as operating outside the conventional protections that regulatory bodies use, in order to safeguard ethics.

If that's not your priority, and you want to press your luck, feel free to take your chances, so long as you acknowlege your adoption of the risks that ride along with that decision.

Break the law, in favor of searching places others dare not go. It's uncharted territory, out where there's no lifeguard. Maybe it seems timid to shy away from risk in a dire situation, but honestly, push hard enough, and I'm sure enterprising people will ignore their own safety in pursuit of impatience.

</comment><comment><USER31> Reason is an unserious publication with an ironic name. The author of this particular article has a financial interest in pushing untested medicine on the suffering. Cancer is a catch-all for a number of different diseases (having a few similarities) that require different treatments. The author chooses to ignore the average age of the population, the size of the population, the diet of the population, and obesity within the population when pulling out statistics. The regulatory framework surrounding medical treatment and drug testing exists BECAUSE people were being harmed by untested medicine.

Thalidomide is just one example.

</comment><comment><USER32> Told that to oncologist, got vaporized. It's a tough moral issue, lack of regulation = deaths, too much regulation = deaths.

<comment><USER33> > lack of regulation = deaths, too much regulation = deaths

lack of regulation = people make their own choices, take risks, and sometimes suffer the consequences

too much regulation = people die because you killed them

Freedom comes with risk, even at times the risk of death. It is not your place to decide how much risk other people are allowed to take.

<comment><USER32> Exactly how I feel about this, with the added bonus of white-coat syndrom. If some doctor says 'you are dead' then why fight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd be curious to hear why these highly experimental approaches (e.g reprogramming immune cells) can't be done in animals with cancer to vet them.

However, I appreciate the spirit of constant vigilance against the lethargy of bureaucracy, even if I know nothing myself firsthand on this topic.

<comment><USER35> >why these highly experimental approaches (e.g reprogramming immune cells) can't be done in animals with cancer

They absolutely are, all the time. Animal testing is relatively cheap (esp. for mice) and widespread in biotech. It's generally hard to get an IND approval (step 1 of human testing) without successful animal tests.

Animal models, unfortunately, aren't super effective at predicting human outcomes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "In 1971, Congress passed the National Cancer Act, which established 69 geographically dispersed, NCI-designated cancer research and treatment centers. James Watson—one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA and at the time a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board—objected strenuously to the move. In fact, DeVita in his memoir remembers the Nobel winner calling the cancer centers program "a pile of shit." Watson was fired that day."

Watson didn't understand congress rarely approves anything that durant supply pork to a majority of districts.

</comment><comment><USER37> It is quite incredible just how clueless we are about human biology, cancer and related things on the fundamental level.

Like a bunch of cavemen staring sky and imagining a bear and wondering why some light move around unlike others.

<comment><USER38> Don't know why people are downvoting you. I did my postdoc at a biomedical research institute at a prestigious university, and you're 100% right. The work I was doing was related to using ontologies to label anatomical parts. Forget "staring at the sky and imagining a bear", that would be tremendous progress if the cavemen actually agreed on one common word, "bear"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> My understanding is that they won't approve a cancer drug unless it's strictly as or more effective than existing drugs, even if it's efficacy to side effect ratio is more favorable.

</comment><comment><USER40> What are the options in regular (preventive maintenance ) cancer screening? Cancer is horrible and I feel like by the time we discover the cancer - <USER2> it presents itself as a symptom - it can be too late. I realize in general preventive medicine seems to be rarely practiced and medical costs are insane (especially in the US), but is it scientifically feasible to detect most cancers early if proper screening were done on a regular basis?

</comment><comment><USER41> The HPV Vaccine (and consequent drop in cervical cancer rates - [1]) certainly seems like an improvement. Similarly, the near fanatical application of sunscreen, reduction in cancer causing chemicals, etc. I would have thought would have brought the cancer rate down as well.

1 - [https://www.sciencealert.com/the-hpv-vaccine-has-halved- cerv...](https://www.sciencealert.com/the-hpv-vaccine-has-halved-cervical- cancer-rates-in-the-past-10-years)

<comment><USER27> HPV vaccine isn't just preventing cancer. I have a rare and potentially fatal condition - HPV warts growing on my vocal cords. I need laser surgery on my vocal cords a few times a year to keep talking, and ultimately to keep breathing.

It's really rare, though... 1.6 adult cases per 100k, and about twice that many child cases (doctors generally believe it's passed during childbirth). Children die from it because it goes undiagnosed, with doctors treating it as bronchitis, when the only actual treatment is specialist surgery.

At any rate, I totally applaud the rise of HPV vaccine. No one should have to deal with this crap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Bottom line up front: If you have good points, make them. Don't lie to me.

Ways this article misuses statistics and history (lies):

0\. Title: When Cancer was Conquerable.

Response: Cancer has never been conquerable. Chemotherapy increased survival rates. Also, cancer is not a single disease.

1\. "The first attempt to treat cancer in humans with chemotherapy happened within days of doctors realizing that it reduced the size of tumors in mice."

Response: True, but misleading. Critical question: What treatment is being replaced? When nothing else worked, you might as well try something. Going from 0% effective treatment to 20% effective treatment is huge enough to warrant extreme risks. Going from 50% to 55% may not warrant the same risks.

2\. "Cancer deaths have fallen by a total of just 5 percent since 1950."

Response: Everyone will die eventually, some people die of cancer; many more people die with cancer (but not necessarily because of cancer). A better metric would be a combination of things like added years of life due to treatment and quality of life factors.

3\. "It is now nearly impossible to conceive of going from a eureka moment to human testing in a few years, much less a few days."

Response: Thank goodness. First, all the easy solutions have been tried. Second, if there is a reasonably, or even partially effective solution in place, the new proposal MUST at least shown to be safe - something that cannot be done in a few days.

4\. "To find cures for cancer, we need novel approaches that produce dramatic results. The only way to get them is by lowering barriers to entry."

Response: The only way to reproduce the dramatic results of the past is to stop treating cancer, and then replace the lack of treatment with a new treatment. Also, there is no such thing "the only way". There is "the only thing I thought of" or "this is the way I think will work"

5\. "Running a clinical trial now requires getting "protocols" approved."

Response: Among other things, if you just run a study and then try to find some benefit, you will ALWAYS find some benefit.

6\. "The problem is clear: Despite tens of billions of dollars every year spent on research, progress in combating cancer has slowed to a snail's pace."

Response: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_paradox)

7\. "Years ago, a Cato Institute study estimated the loss of life resulting from FDA-related drug delays from 1962 to 1985 in the hundreds of thousands."

Response: Did Cato also do a study to show lives saved by FDA (and IRB, and safety testing) drug cancellations? New drugs are not risk free.

8\. "We used to think cancer was conquerable. Today, that idea is often laughed off as utopian. But there are countless reasons to believe that progress has slowed because of organizational and governmental problems, not because the disease is inherently incurable."

Response: We also used to thing we'd have anti-gravity and moon bases by this point. There is also a much deeper understanding of the class of diseases known as cancer.

<comment><USER43> I'm just going to respond to a few of these:

>>Response: Cancer has never been conquerable. Chemotherapy increased survival rates.

This is a reference to the confidence early researchers had, as a result of the rapid pace of progress. Your literal reading of it is disingenuous.

>>Response: True, but misleading. Critical question: What treatment is being replaced? When nothing else worked, you might as well try something.

An article is limited in the number of caveats it can include. It's pretty harsh to describe a pertinent fact: that human experimentation came much earlier 70 years ago, which in turn resulted in some rapid advances in cancer treatment, as "misleading", because it didn't outline every other contributing factor to the change.

Also, there are cancers today that are 100% fatal. We don't see the rapid time from discovery to human use for drugs used for this class of cancer.

>>Response: Among other things, if you just run a study and then try to find some benefit, you will ALWAYS find some benefit.

This is hyperbole, and in any case, doesn't negate the point about the rising costs of doing human studies.

So you start your comment with:

>>Ways this article misuses statistics and history (lies):

And all I see is you misreading the points made, or disagreeing with the implications of the points made.

If you're going to accuse people of lying, you have a moral responsibility to be more rigorous with your arguments.

<comment><USER42> > This is a reference to the confidence early researchers had, as a result of > the rapid pace of progress. Your literal reading of it is disingenuous.

You can't have it both ways. It's either a factual article or a puff piece. (It's a puff piece by the way).

> An article is limited in the number of caveats it can include.

The author does not introduce ANY caveats which get in the way of her points.

> If you're going to accuse people of lying, you have a moral responsibility > to be more rigorous with your arguments.

[http://wondermark.com/1k62/](http://wondermark.com/1k62/)

<comment><USER43> The article doesn't include the caveat that the slowdown in progress could be due to the low hanging fruit being picked in the early decades? You're not giving the article a fair or honest review.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Toynbee tiles - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toynbee_tiles <comment><USER2> I found the documentary about these tiles to be pretty interesting as well: "Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles"</comment>


Why Self-Checkout Is and Has Always Been the Worst - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/why-self-checkout-is-and-has-always-been-the-worst-1833106695 <comment><USER2> Maddeningly, this article wanders around without really making the key points. The self-checkout experience could be done reasonably well, but hasn't been. Why? The article doesn't talk about it.

Yes, companies want to cut costs, but there's nothing wrong with that. It is true, though, that there needs to be something in it for the user, or else why bother? So, for example, how about a 5% discount for self-checking?

I've noticed also that huge kiosk rollout at McDonald's has apparently failed. They're not as bad as grocery self-checks, but they're not good. And few people are using them. Who thought this was going to work?

</comment><comment><USER3> Even with all their problems I still prefer self checkout for three reasons: 1) Speed due to the line being shorter and being able to scan and pay for my items quicker than the cashier typically can 2) not having to interact with a stranger if I don't feel like it and 3) I can bag my items the way I like them to be bagged.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't consider self checkouts to be automation.

All they don't is turn the touch screen around to face the customer, and dumbed it down a bit.

There's nothing automated about having to perform the entire task yourself.

My favourite pet peeve with the ones at my local supermarket is that they're called "assisted checkouts". Assisted? Yeah, by _me_.</comment>


Ruby editor? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a text editor to save ".rb" files, but I can't find any programs out there that are free... Most are 30 day trials.
Is ruby installer suppose to come with a text editor program?
Apologies I'm just starting to code and a bit unfamiliar with how to go about this. <comment><USER2> From Zed Shaw's "Learn Python the Hard Way":

>If a programmer tells you to use vim or emacs, tell them no. These editors are for when you are a better programmer. All you need right now is an editor that lets you put text into a file. We will use gedit because it is simple and the same on all computers. Professional programmers use gedit so it's good enough for you starting out.

<comment><USER3> gedit with this <https://github.com/gmate/gmate>

Been suggesting Ubuntu+gedit+gmate to my friends who are starting with programming. It's better than the editor that ships with Windows (most in my geographic region use windows... like 99%).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any text editor will be able to save .rb files; they're just plain text files. Also, you didn't say which OS you're on, but assuming you're on Windows, notepad++ is a good free editor.

<http://notepad-plus-plus.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> You should try <http://sublimetext.com>

It's sort of like textmate but also cross-platform, so in theory you won't have to learn another editor. I'd learn it myself if I wasn't already used to textmate.

<comment><USER6> I like this editor a lot also. Sublime Text 2 is quite nice. Enables me to use a nice editor across all of the platforms on which I have to develop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You might as well skip past all the toys and get Emacs and start on the lifelong journey of understanding it. Vim might be worth looking at too, but it's not my cup of tea.

</comment><comment><USER8> Since you said installer I might assume use of windows, take a look at notepad++ (<http://notepad-plus-plus.org/>)

OS x or linux check out gedit. (<http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/> Downloads on right side of front page.) Also available for windows, but notepad++ is a little easier to use if you are used to windows programs.

</comment><comment><USER9> it looks like you could use most any text editor. most os's have a default text editor.

if you want a ruby IDE, try redcar - <http://www.redcareditor.com>.

</comment><comment><USER10> On my Ubuntu netbook, I love GEdit <http://grigio.org/pimp_my_gedit_was_textmate_linux>

</comment><comment><USER11> My setup on Ubuntu is as follows. I use a drop down terminal called Yakuake. It drops down from the top of my screen when I press F12. From there I can create a ruby document by typing

vim example.rb

You don't have to use or learn all of vims features straight away. I probably use 1% of it but I like it. :w to save, :wq to save and quit.

</comment><comment><USER12> Vim has good coloring and you can add completion to it.

Do you need anything else in an editor?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, Vim is definitely helpful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I mostly use TextMate (OS X) and GEdit (on Linux), but perhaps 1/4 of the time I use RubyMine because autocompletion and immediate flagging of syntax errors can help.

</comment><comment><USER14> komodoedit is very nice <http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit>

</comment><comment><USER15> I've used Textmate for about four years now and I'm really happy with it. But if it's not for you, just use iTerm2 and learn the Vim.</comment>


Bludit - <AUTHOR> https://www.bludit.com <comment><AUTHOR> This is my project to create sites or blogs, you don't need a database; Bludit uses flat files for store posts and pages. Here is a scalability test [http://scalability-bludit.rhcloud.com](http://scalability-bludit.rhcloud.com)</comment>


Sony's 2001 offer from Steve Jobs to run Mac OS on Vaio laptops - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2014/02/05/sony-turned-down-offer-from-steve-jobs-to-run-mac-os-on-vaio-laptops-says-ex-president/

<comment><USER2> While the story may or may not be true, I cannot believe that Sony would have been able to sell Microsoft on the idea that some of their "PCs" were going to run MacOS. There was a pretty interesting example of how Microsoft responds when ASUS first tried to ship a x86 laptop with Linux as standard. (the EEEPC line) It resulted in a huge flap that spilled out publicly with things like ARM laptops being ordered off the expo floor at CeBIT and Microsoft bringing back a "dead" version of Windows XP for that particular model. But the bottom line was they went all out to keep ASUS from shipping a non-windows Laptop and that was in 2006 or 7. Five years earlier I expect they would have just threatened to pull Sony completely out of the OEM licensing program.

<comment><USER3> Dell was able to pull it off. The only Dell PC I've ever purchased was an Inspiron 1420n which came bundled with Ubuntu 7.04.

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/10/dell- inspiron-1420n-u...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/10/dell- inspiron-1420n-ubuntu-laptop-review/)

<comment><USER2> That's a fair point. It was a bit later, the interesting bit about the anti- trust suit is also good, I could see how Sony _could_ pull it off, but I still don't think they ever seriously considered it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Story from 'the wife' seems a bit stretched - especially the part about next morning flight.. but all in all it wouldn't be surprising if there was some truth to it because Jobs was obsessed with Sony since 80s and tried to, basically, build Sony 2. This is well documented and probably the most visible part of it was his turtleneck attire which was modeled after what he saw at Sony (they wore uniforms).

<comment><USER5> The creative director of Apple's ad agency tells a story that illustrates Jobs's Sony obsession well [1].

In 1998, when Steve Jobs was back as interim CEO at Apple and had a cool new consumer computer nearing completion, he wanted to call it "MacMan", along the lines of Walkman. It was changed to "iMac" at the last minute.

We nearly ended up with PhoneMan 5s running ManOS 7...!

[1] [http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669924/steve-jobs-almost- named-...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669924/steve-jobs-almost-named-the- imac-the-macman-until-this-guy-stopped-him)

<comment><USER6> I would absolutely buy and use any operating system called ManOS.

<comment> pi-err ManOs X ! The hands of fate log10! [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060666/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060666/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A friend of mine on CompuServe back in the '80s posted a story about running into some Sony execs at CES. He told them he loved the picture quality of Betamax, but he was afraid VHS would win because it could fit most movies on a single tape and people didn't want to switch tapes.

One of the Sony execs looked at him and said, "We think we know what is best."

<comment><USER8> For a long time, iOS didn't have multitasking. If Steve Jobs heard that complaint from someone and replied, "We think we know what is best", would that person have thrown their hands up exasperated? Sometimes, visionaries are right, sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes, the customer is right, sometimes the customer is wrong. It's sometimes a crapshoot.

<comment><USER9> "We know what we're doing" basically _was_ Apple's response to multitasking. They said the iPhone worked well enough. Once they figured out a good way to do it, one they were happy with, they released it.

It's not a perfect comparison. The iPhone worked quite well without multi- tasking, I had one. It wasn't a big problem. On the other hand, having to always swap tapes half-way through a movie would be a deal breaker for most people. Sony eventually addressed that, but it was too late.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Of note: the original PowerBook 100 was design by Apple and manufactured by Sony. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_100)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been looking for a new laptop that will build Firefox or FirefoxOS in a reasonable amount of time. Macbook Pros, AFAICT are the only game in town. (Would love to be wrong here)

Perhaps in this alternate universe... Sony, Lenovo and others are producing reasonable high-end laptops.

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure the top-end Dell Precision mobile workstations have more computing power than the top-end Macbook pros, for instance. The same is probably true for the HP Elitebooks.

They may not be as light, though.

<comment><USER13> Yep if you're willing to trade weight you can easily get a core i7-3840QM which can do 8 threads (4 cores) fairly fast. My current one I've been able to emulate some of the last gen consoles even for fun, compiling Firefox or Firefox OS is largely going to be an issue of disk speed which is fixable with either gobs of ram or and SSD, (preferably both, though overprices the alienware m18x r2 will take multiple drives, an msata ssd, and 32gb of ram and can be upgraded to workstation graphics cards if you have the cash).

<comment><USER14> Disk i/o is not the bottleneck when compiling an OS.

<comment><USER13> When i was last using gentoo (which admittidly was a while ago) it was pretty much the bottle neck for most things if you wanted to compile in parallel, largely because intermediate steps are written out to the disk before linking and less so because of reading. That said it is possible to do it all in memory but then you end up memory bound which is also possible to work around by throwing money at your ram (or downloading more off the web).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would it have really made a difference? Inter-company collaborations always end up with one company becoming dependent or the other buying them out, or both. Vaio would have become synonymous with Mac OS until Apple ditched them and left them to the same fate as they currently face.

<comment><USER9> Apple's problem was the other clone manufacturers undercutting them. Sony is a company that is known for being willing to charge premium prices for their premium products. It may have worked out.

I'm not sure it would have made much of a difference though.

<comment><USER16> I am thinking commoditization of the entire device is flawed while commoditization of parts is not. The way people think they can buy a PC for cheaper than the price of its parts is probably a good example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Originally posted at: [http://www.quora.com/Apple-company/How-does-Apple-keep- secre...](http://www.quora.com/Apple-company/How-does-Apple-keep-secrets-so- well)

Kim replies in the comments there, too. Intriguingly, the post is marked as "Not for Reproduction," whatever that means.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like Steve was trying to break into the Asian market. Mac OS has always been a mostly North American phenomenon but Steve liked to think big.

Mac OS world marketshare: [http://www.webdeveloper.net.au/web-usage/operating- system/ap...](http://www.webdeveloper.net.au/web-usage/operating-system/apple- mac-osx/)

<comment><USER19> Wow, Iceland really likes Macs. Can anyone explain why? I suppose the population is small enough that it only takes a few adopters to drive up the percentage, but still.

<comment><USER20> It could be due to localization issues. Is Icelandic OS X better than Icelandic Windows? The availability of an Icelandic keyboard?

<comment><USER21> Could be that pre-OSX was built with very good localization for more obscure* languages and it carried over into today.

*(Icelandic has at most has ~350k speakers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really wish Apple would just open this up, or go all out and open source it which I guess may be possible now that they've stopped charging for it.

Looking at the North Korean ripoff version earlier today [1[ it was by far the nicest looking linux desktop I've ever seen heh.

[1] [http://rt.com/news/north-korea-os-mac-747/](http://rt.com/news/north- korea-os-mac-747/) or on HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7188036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7188036)

<comment><USER9> They haven't stopped charging for it, it's not free. It's subsidized by Mac sales.

If they open sourced OS X, they would kill it's funding source and screw themselves.

Actually, that's _exactly_ what happened when they allowed clones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sony would have passed because of iTunes, Sony isn't going to sell hardware that plays songs from Sony Music and pays Apple as the middle man.

</comment><comment><USER24> maybe running the very new (and buggy) Mac OS X version 10.0 (Cheetah) or maybe the later 2001 Mac OS X version 10.1 (Puma) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.1)

the pairs of ppc and i386 header files

I had heard of Apple internally testing Mac OS or Mac OS X on Intel-based hardware.

<comment><USER25> Jobs specifically claimed that every version of OS X had been compiled for both PowerPC and Intel processors, though I can't remember if any proof of this was ever given.

<comment><USER26> NEXTSTEP ran on Intel, Sparc, Motorola, and I think PA-RISC at various times. No reason to believe they didn't have an Intel build of OS X from day one.</comment></comment></comment>


Fascia encases tissues and organs and may have widespread effects (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/everywhere-in-your-body-is-tissue-called-fascia-scientists-are-unlocking-its-secrets/2019/01/25/e0414e3e-f4e0-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html <comment><USER2> Over the years I've written here several times about my efforts to explain and overcome mysterious chronic health impairments including fatigue/lethargy and tension/pain.

In recent times, my research and experimentation has led me to explanations and treatments that focus on the fascia, and whilst I've not yet achieved full recovery (a recovery time of several years is par for the course with these kinds of issues), this approach does seem to be helping to improve my conditions.

The approaches I've been undertaking include yoga/pilates-type stretching exercises and specific types of massage that seek to break up fascia "adhesions" [1].

I'm being careful not to make any specific claims of diagnoses or remedies, as I'm fully aware from my own experience (and background as a scientifically- minded person) that this this whole topic is nascent in terms of solid scientific evidence, and rife with pseudoscience.

But it does seem clear to me that there is "something there", and that more research into this topic could likely lead to explanations and remedies for conditions like "chronic pain" and "chronic fatigue", which many people currently endure for years or for life without understanding or relief.

[1] It's not the only work I've been doing; as I've written about here before, diet, cardio exercise and emotional work have all been part of my regimen for some years, but since introducing the practices that focus on fascia, my condition has improved faster and in different ways.

<comment><USER3> Even as much as a disalignment of a degree forward or backward rotation in the pelvis, caused by sitting for a long time and thereby shortening the back muscle, or hunching forward, can cause stress on other systems in the body.

Here is a little fun exercise to show the effect of fascia : bend over, straight legs and see how far your hands go, just measuring how close you get to your feet (they don't have to touch, don't push yourself, just see where you end up) Now take a tennisbal or small round object and stand or move with one foot on it for a while, and roll a bit especially on the arch of the foot, like a massage. Now do the exercise again, bending over with your hands towards your feet and see what happens.

<comment><USER4> For that experiment to be valid you'd probably want to do a control where you try the stretch, then wait doing nothing for the same amount of time that you would roll your feet and try again and another where you just rotate your ankle in the same way you would if you had a tennis ball under it. Taking your baseline reading one day and trying the tennis ball plus stretch the next day or week would be good too.

This wouldn't really convince me because I find any additional stretching helps with my reach and I'm more likely to chalk it up to a warm up effect or maybe some other effect on the the tendons or muscles. I don't see any particular reason to attribute it to fascia release.

<comment><USER5> But you haven't said anything here that discount that it could be, at least in part, due to fascia release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think things like the work with fascia suffer from people feeling the need to explain something with scientific terms. For a few years I was involved in the yoga community and noticed a lot of practices where something that was clearly beneficial to a lot of people got explained with clearly very questionable science terms.

I am not sure why that is. Will you get ignored when you demonstrate something that works but say "I have no idea why or how it works" ?

<comment><USER7> This is a good observation. I think that "it works but we don't know why" is appealing to a small slice of well-educated people who are comfortable with complexity and the limits of knowledge, but otherwise off-putting.

For most people I think that "it works but we don't know why," translates to "it doesn't really work." Thus a fake explanation adds credibility and believability. And if it _does_ work, then people feel reassured and confident in the fake explanation.

It's all pretty tricky human psychology though.

<comment><USER6> Is this specific to medicine? In physics it's perfectly ok to say " here is an observation which can't be explained with our current knowledge ". See dark matter and dark energy.

The story of Ignaz Semmelweis seems to indicate that medicine is different from physics in that aspect.

<comment><USER8> Placebo effects are very real and any drugs efficacy will include _some_ placebo effect

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Placebo- controlled_stu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Placebo- controlled_studies)

<comment><USER6> That's another thing I wonder about. What's so wrong about the placebo effect? If it makes people feel better we should embrace it. I think a lot of things like yoga work because they are done in positive environments by positive people. Whereas a lot of regular medicine is performed in pretty negative circumstances. So the same treatment may not work in a doctors office but it may work in a yoga studio.

<comment><USER9> The problem isn't the placebo effect per se. Nor with it's application as a treatment. It's with misleading people as to what is actually helping them. For example selling magical crystals to adjust your aura. I don't know about studies and evidence specific to yoga, but would suspect it's benefits are a combination of real and placebo. Thus it isn't all placebo effect as there is a foundation of actual therapeutic benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whenever anything "smells" like pop pseudoscience, I think we should apply scientific resources to build an evidence base. As opposed to getting scared.

I've been doing empirical research on "the vibe" for that reason. It is commonly enough discussed in popular culture and is clearly valuable. Yet, there is almost nothing scholarly written about it. To me, as a scientist, that says "low hanging fruit." Any association with the esoteric will create a kind of forcefield around it, so many fewer scientists will have studied it. But, in my opinion, the topics are avoided for the wrong reasons.

<comment><USER11> If you're in the SF Bay Area and want to "do science" to Reiki "energy" I'm available. I don't know what the phenomenon _is_ but it engenders pretty dramatic physiological changes in a way that should be easy to measure somehow.

<comment><USER12> I've heard about this topic. Got any good links so I can learn more? Thanks.

<comment><USER11> Actually, no. I haven't kept up with the community at all. I just looked at [https://www.reiki.org](https://www.reiki.org) and they seem to be pretty solid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > As the only tissue that modifies its consistency when under stress (it's > your body's shape-shifter, of sorts), fascia is [...]

the cervix also modifies itself under stress (child birth), stimulated by oxytocin (aka cervical ripening) or other hormones

<comment><USER14> I'd argue that the properties of most / all tissues undergo changes when subject to stress.

Stress ramps up blood pressure, causes changes in the properties of blood directly, increases inflammation, down regulates the immune system and healing in general, increases muscle tension generally, constricts blood vessels, causes changes in hormones and cell signalling molecules in general.

<comment><USER15> "Stress" as in physics, not the biological sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "He suggests that stiff fascia decreases lymphatic fluid flow and can contribute to swelling in the limbs."

The first thing I thought that sounded like was ancient Chinese medicine and the Meridian system. [1]

Next I thought of the reflexology diagrams of areas of the bottom of the foot being connected to different parts of the body. The foot is a body part particularly rich in fascia.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_(Chinese_medicine)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_\(Chinese_medicine\))

<comment><USER17> You know what else can contribute to swelling in the limbs? Heart failure. Massages might help with circulation a little, but no amount of massaging is going to correct a serious cardiovascular problem.

I believe that connective tissues do have real function and massages could have some mild health benefits. But I don't like this article because it doesn't sound like science. And there are quite a few people promoting pseudo- scientific ideas that can influence patients to put off effective treatments.

<comment><USER2> > I don't like this article because it doesn't sound like science

The article is specifically about the fact that the scientific community has little knowledge or consensus about this topic, but that hypotheses are being formulated and research undertaken.

This is the epitome of how science progresses in as-yet unexplored fields.

> there are quite a few people promoting pseudo-scientific ideas that can > influence patients to put off effective treatments

Perhaps you should provide evidence that measures up to your own standards: what data is there to demonstrate that significant numbers of people have died of cardiovascular illness because they tried to treat serious limb swelling with just massage?

On the flipside, here's some relevant data:

– "Drug overdose deaths involving prescription opioids rose from 3,442 in 1999 to 17,029 in 2017" [1]

– "Orthopedic pain (34.8%) was the primary reason for an opioid prescription, followed by [...], back pain (14.0%), and headache (12.9%)" [2]

If it turns out that fascia-related issues are frequently a factor in these kinds of chronic pain conditions, which currently seems at least somewhat plausible, it may well turn out to be a scandal that this topic has not yet been more heavily researched, given that many people outside the pharmaceutical sector of the health industry have been talking about it for years or even decades.

[1] [https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends- statistics/o...](https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends- statistics/overdose-death-rates)

[2] [https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(19)30216-8/pdf](https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797\(19\)30216-8/pdf)

<comment><USER4> If there's little knowledge or consensus then we should be cautiously optimistic about any perceived progress, we shouldn't run headlong into X fixes everything territory. It's important to keep in mind that we may not know why something works because that is also how science progresses, it's the motivation to continue refining a process or experiment until we have fully explained the method of action. Doing this often leads to important improvements in the method of application.

The epitome of how science progresses is diligently applying the scientific method (repeatedly) and not fucking with the results to generate hype or feed a pet theory.

The biggest news out of this is that stretching and exercise are still good for your health and you should do them more often. Massage probably won't hurt but if you have serious health problems you should probably still see a doctor.

<comment><USER2> > we shouldn't run headlong into X fixes everything territory

Nobody in the article or this discussion thread has said we should do this, or said anything else that seriously contradicts anything you've said.

Not a single person has said anything to contradict the notion that you should see a doctor if you have serious health problems.

The article is very clearly about early stage observations and preliminary research.

These grave warnings are an unnecessary downer in a discussion that should be focused on interesting possibilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://outline.com/CpFycx](https://outline.com/CpFycx)

</comment><comment><USER19> While I have no experience with, or would endorse it, the practice of 'rolfing' should be mentioned in this context. It specifically targets fascias with manipulations.

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

<comment><USER20> I went in with an open mind, then

> It is based on Rolf's ideas about how the human body's "energy field" can > benefit when aligned with the Earth's gravitational field

Nope.

<comment><USER21> I went in with an open mind in 1775^, then

> My reader will not wonder, that, after having ascertained the superior > goodness of dephlogisticated air by mice living in it, and the other tests > above mentioned, I should have the curiosity to taste it myself.

Nope.

It's important to remember that unbelievable beliefs associated with observations do not implicitly negate the observations, especially when it comes to understudied areas of the human body.

What we know about the vagus nerve today seemed insane and nonsensical fifty years ago, but historical writings for hundreds of years are filled with tales of drinking magic elixirs that change people's mind and body. Magic? Probably not. Valid? Possibly so.

Further study is required, if only to separate the magic from the biology.

^ [https://thoracickey.com/joseph-priestley-oxygen-and-the- enli...](https://thoracickey.com/joseph-priestley-oxygen-and-the- enlightenment/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I remember once reading about fascia and RSI. Can't find a great article but here's a quick one:

[http://www.rsi.org.uk/whatis/damaged_muscles.html](http://www.rsi.org.uk/whatis/damaged_muscles.html)

And something called trigger point therapy:

[https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/myofascial- pa...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/myofascial-pain- syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20375444)

</comment><comment><USER23> Some research indicates that acupuncture's effects operate through fascia: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13608...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1360859210000422)

</comment><comment><USER5> From my own experience with "energy" I seem to be able to have a higher resolution experience with than most, along with my experience as a client for acupuncture, physiotherapy, osteopathy, and other - I think it will be an uphill battle to come to a scientific consensus as I don't believe we currently have tools to adequately measure what is happening on the subtle level of how energy flows or for what information flows (or becomes stuck/blocked). And what purpose is it flowing? It is just some form of static that we've evolved to ground literally into the ground - whether as a form of waste or perhaps more - and perhaps our rubber soled shoes most of society now wears for the majority of our days, at least when we're most active, plays a role in tension building and fascia-related dis-ease occurring and progressing?

Edit: Thanks for the downvotes and supporting philosophy and an open discussion for what hasn't been proven! You'd almost certainly also downvote theoretical physicists and people historically who brainstormed as to possible reasons the planets moved the way they did or other physics properties - examples of which exist where they wrote about where they had part of the idea right but not fully. How about adding to the conversation instead of being lazy and downvoting to suppress topics you don't seemingly have experience with? You know you could say "I don't have the same experience" or "I experience things this way". Or perhaps if you don't have any understanding or experience of related to things then maybe stay out of the conversation?

<comment><USER24> I upvoted you for the first paragraph, against my long-standing practice of refusing to boost anyone who complains about downvotes.

Don't do that here. Just accept it; sometimes it's on you, sometimes it's on them, complaining never helps.

<comment><USER5> I wholeheartedly disagree with downvote mechanism - it's a terrible mechanism for guiding toward civil conversation, and the fact that even talking about that is artificially frowned upon is absurd. If people have an issue with something - if it's well thought out enough reason by a person who would otherwise downvote, then if they're not willing to even spend the effort to articulate it into words - which would 1) help them think through their logic, develop their own critical thinking, perhaps catch incongruence, and 2) offer an opportunity of a different perspective to the person they're responding to. The ease of someone downvoting, the laziness of it, doesn't match real world conversations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is mostly nonsense.

eg : "If you talk to most surgeons, they would think of it as 'what you cut through'"

Surgeons actively use fascia to ease peeling off one structure of the other. They actively use fascia as conduit from an incision to deeper parts of the body; literally, to stick a hand in.

Eg: most of the article uses the term "fascia" in away akin to an "organ", i.e.: "fascia is everywhere".

That means the author did not fully grasp the concept (if at all).

Think of "fascia" (plural) as "sheets". You have many such "sheets" in your body. (I know that term and this concept were mentioned in the article; but not in away that conveyed a useful or fully correct understanding).

The existence of fascia has long since been known. Testut and Latarjet extensively described fascial anatomy... in the end of the 18th century!

Fascia are known pathways for spread of disease. Fascia cause compartment- syndrome in limbs.

etc.

It's fascianating :-) how this is now described as something new and almost magical...

</comment><comment><USER11> Kind of a tangent but does anyone know the name of the recently discovered sub-dermal tissue? It a network of fine capillaries (that have something other than blood in them) IIRC.

It wasn't discovered previously because it shrivels or thins out after death, something like that.

I remember reading about it a few years ago. It was like we had found a new organ.

<comment><USER26> I think you're thinking of Interstitium

" Meet Your Interstitium, a Newfound "Organ" These fluid-filled spaces were found in the body's connective tissue"

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-your- interst...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-your-interstitium- a-newfound-organ/)

<comment><USER11> Bingo! Thank you! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Aren't a lot of top athletes into therapies related to this?

<comment><USER28> Top athletes of all sorts seem to try treatments that aren't scientifically proven to actually work and yet they continue being employed.

Compression, dry needling, tape, and so on. And despite scientists rolling their eyes, the athletes seem happy.

As am I. And quite frankly, that's good enough for me. Though I won't claim it's not placebo. And I won't claim it will work for everybody.

In sports where there's little to no money to be made, you'll find even more of these anecdotes. It's quite amusing, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One of the popular alternative cerebral palsy therapies that is called ABR which also works on trying to improve fascia.

</comment><comment><USER30> Makes me think of the practice of "silk reeling."

Edit: pithiness

</comment><comment><USER31> Top top top athletes know how to harness their fascia for "super" human strength. Bruce Lee and the 1" punch is the best example.

<comment><USER15> [https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a3093/the- sc...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a3093/the-science-of- bruce-lees-one-inch-punch-16814527/) suggests that the one-inch punch is enabled by simultaneously releasing energy from multiple muscles, all contributing to the movement of the fist. What do fascia have to do with that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This article and discussion is just packed with pseudoscience. Not what I was expecting at hackernews. What does "releasing the fascia" even mean?

I'm an MD, I have performed a lot of dissections of and through fascias. It's absolutely interesting, there's A LOT we don't now. Let's not reduce the complexity to "releasing the fascia".

<comment><USER2> > It's absolutely interesting, there's A LOT we don't [k]now

Thanks for conceding that, as a mainstream medical professional.

But maybe give people a break.

Given that there's a lot we don't know, it's fair enough for laypeople to talk about it in fuzzy terms and use metaphors that make sense to them, until your profession has more detailed knowledge to share.

As one of the many people who has suffered severe pain and debilitating illness for many years, which has not responded to conventional medical treatment but has responded in interesting ways to various practices that purport to address problems with the fascia, I appeal to you to dial down the know-all attitude and be part of a good-faith discussion from which we can all learn and benefit.

EDIT: In response to your question " _What does "releasing the fascia" even mean?_", this quote from a recent medical journal paper [1] may suggest an answer:

 _There are some researchers who suggest strongly that any change in the viscoelasticity of the fascial system activates the nociceptors.3,12 The hyaluronic acid becomes adhesive and less lubricated, altering the lines of forces within the various fascial layers.3 This mechanism could be one of the causes of articular stiffness and pain in the morning.11 In fact, the stiffness experienced by some patients when they wake up in the morning could be related not with the joint but with the fascial system: if there is a minor quantity of hyaluronic acid or when it is not equally distributed, the tissue is dehydrated and has less possibility of sliding.3,11,12_

So as I understand it, what people refer to as "releasing the fascia" describes a mechanism to detach adhesions that form between the fascia layers due to this reduced viscoelasticity.

I claim no expertise on this topic and cannot vouch for the medical validity of this paper; I just learn what I can from the material available, and apply it to my own healing efforts where it may be applicable.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4173815/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4173815/)

<comment><USER33> > Thanks for conceding that, as a mainstream medical professional.

when my GF started med school, she was told "half of what we teach you here will be proven wrong"

I don't think anyone in the medical profession actually thinks they know everything or that a lot is unknown.

<comment><USER2> No doubt! Given this, it'd be much better if my parent commenter had brought that kind of humility and a spirit of acceptance and constructiveness to the discussion.

<comment><USER32> Sorry if I sounded unnecessarily hard, that wasn't my intention. Another commenter mentioned that 50% of what we learn in med school is wrong, I'd say it's probably much higher than 50%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Where is the BEEF?

Any surgeon or occupational therapist can talk about fascia for hours. There is nothing new in this article that has not been known for decades if not centuries. (search Scholar pre-1700 and there are plenty talking about fascia.)

To draw a parallel, it is like writing an article about using bank debit cards, instead of writing checks. Or, dealing with an automated teller machine instead walking into a bank to get cash.

</comment><comment><USER35> I see much speculation in this article, but no actual evidence-based understanding.

<comment><USER36> speculation is how we choose what to evidence to look for

<comment><USER37> The problem is not choice but a lack of evidence.

<comment><USER2> A significant portion of the article is literally about painstaking work that is being done to start building a body of evidence.

Anecdote and informal observation has always been, and must necessarily be, a prior stage to formal evidence-gathering.

That the evidence-gathering is only starting to happen now indicates nothing about what the outcomes may be.

But the fact that there continue to be vast numbers of people suffering "mystery" and "incurable" illnesses means there really needs to be far more of this kind of observation and early-stage evidence gathering.

I'd invite you to do some reflecting on what motivates you to be so dismissive of research that could turn out to have huge benefits for huge numbers of people.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Awesome Looking Terminal with Oh-My-Zsh - <AUTHOR> http://bosnadev.com/2015/02/26/awesome-looking-terminal-with-oh-my-zsh/

<comment><USER2> My setup is Yakuake with the Fish shell as my default. I'm running KDE on Netrunner (Kubuntu based) and have the shortcut set to ~. It's convenient being able to open up a terminal anytime you need it by just pressing the one key.

Edit: Never tried Zsh, might give it a shot with a similar setup, but I'll likely keep yakuake for simplicity's sake.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yakuake is OK to, I also used it when I was on KDE. You should give it a try to zsh ;)</comment></comment>