Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment - <AUTHOR> https://casetext.com/posts/hawaii-bans-non-compete-and-non-solicit-clauses-in-high-tech-employment <comment><USER2> A really good book to read on the subject is AnnaLee Saxenian's Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 ([http://www.amazon.com/Regional-Advantage-Culture- Competition...](http://www.amazon.com/Regional-Advantage-Culture-Competition- Silicon/dp/0674753402)). It discusses why Route 128 failed while Silicon Valley flourished. A major part is that under California law, non-competes are not enforceable in California. As people moved freely between competing companies, their ideas, information, and best practices traveled with them. The diffusion of good ideas gave the region as a whole a competitive edge.

<comment><USER3> Yes - this is an instance where a law can help an ecosystem at the expense of individual players. In aggregate though, it's net neutral for most companies, since they benefit from being able to hire from competitors. The companies doing interesting things probably benefit, while the ones doing boring things get a little hurt.

The (largely untrained) economist in me says that mobility of labor is very important for growth and economic efficiency, as systems work best when the best people flock to the most important well funded ideas.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. You touch upon one of my pet peeves. A huge amount of legislative energy is spent to ensure that capital can move around unfettered. On the contrary, movement of skill and intellectual property seems purposefully hindered. Implicitly it says that capital is much more important than the others, I simply disagree.

<comment><USER5> It's less that capital is _more important_ and more that it's inherently _more concentrated_ , and hence, _more capable of expressing its political will_.

A dynamic pointed out quite explicitly by Adam Smith in _Wealth of Nations_.

<comment><USER3> There's an economics term for this, though I'm spacing on the name. It's the same reason the taxi lobby is so strong - it's a subset of 1 issue voters with concentrated financial support of key issues. It's also behind why tax loopholes are so hard to close - a small subset cares a lot, but the masses less so.

<comment><USER5> There are several. Smith noted Hobbes's truism: wealth is power. You might be thinking of the logic of collective action, Mancur Olsen.

<comment><USER3> Yes - Mancur Olson it is. Thanks! It's more subtle than just Wealth is Power, as it also explains some counterintuitive results.

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

<comment><USER5> Quite. A personal fave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excellent.

If you want your employees to stay, and to contribute their ideas to you instead of running off to your competitors or starting their own companies, it's so so so much better to just treat your employees better than the bind them legally.

<comment><USER7> I always found it weird when employers wanted to start a relationship entirely adversarially. I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant and therefore negative cost center.

Employees are life blood. If they aren't, get rid of them and get new life blood - but being so standoffish and adversarial is the antithesis of what an employer/employee relationship should be.

<comment><USER8> > _I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant > and therefore negative cost center_

But they _are_ pretty much the biggest cost center for any employer? I'm not saying employees should not be valued and treated well, but salaries add up to a lot of money.

<comment><USER9> Yes, employees are expensive, but they're also the companies biggest assets. It's worth treating them well. Without them, you're nothing.

If a company wants loyalty from their employees, they have to demonstrate their own loyalty towards their employees first.

Edit: maybe calling employees assets is wrong, because you don't own or control them. The _relationships_ with your employees (and those with your customers) are your biggest assets. Ruin those relationships, and you squander your biggest sources of expertise and revenue.

<comment><USER8> > _It 's worth treating them well._

Again, I agree.

> _Without them, you 're nothing._

Plenty of lifestyle business owners would beg to differ.

> _If a company wants loyalty from their employees, they have to demonstrate > their own loyalty towards their employees first._

How? What's loyalty in this context anyway? Working your ass off for your employer? Or perhaps not firing someone even though he's holding your business back? I would recommend neither.

<comment><USER9> You seem to have a very limited view of employer-employee relationships. Work is a big part of our life, but not all of it. We don't live to work, but work to live. Just acknowledging that would go a long way. Give employees the room they need to get their lives in order if they need it. Don't work them til they drop, but give them a healthy amount of vacation time, and only ask them to work overtime in extreme cases. Make sure they're happy. Invest in their training. Don't screw them over. Don't treat them as expendable resources. And when someone is holding your business back, maybe figure out why that is, before you blindly fire him.

<comment><USER8> What exactly prompted you to give me that advice?

I'm planning to treat my employees very well, if I ever have some.

<comment><USER9> Did you miss that I responded to you? You asked, I answered the question. That prompted me.

It's great that you intend to treat your employees well. I hope every company does that.

<comment><USER8> Nope, I just didn't see how you reached the conclusion that I needed to be told to treat my employees well.

I still don't :p

But nevermind.

<comment><USER9> You asked: "What's loyalty in this context anyway? Working your ass off for your employer? Or perhaps not firing someone even though he's holding your business back? I would recommend neither."

I consider those very short-sighted interpretations of loyalty, so I gave some better examples. If you don't want them, then don't ask for them.

I'm completely baffled by your reaction to receiving an answer to your question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As I understand it, non-competes are very hard to enforce and are more of an intimidation tactic than anything else. You cannot be prevented from earning a living the only way you know how given the demand for your skills. If you're bound by a non-compete and the only (or the best) job available is with the competition, you shouldn't be afraid to take it, and the courts will side with you if someone goes after you (well, unless you're in Hawaii according to the article!).

An agreement is not enforceable if it is unreasonable, and denying someone the opportunity to make a living is pretty much unreasonable out of the box. Of course it's not true in every case, but it is mostly true for "techie jobs".

(I am not a laywer, the above is not legal advice).

<comment><USER11> Washington and Massachusetts (states with significant high-tech employee bases) are also very friendly to employers in enforcing non-competes. (IANAL)

<comment><USER12> I can't speak for Massachussetts, but in Washington state non-competes have to be narrowly tailored resulting in them being relatively hard to enforce.

<comment><USER13> Didn't Microsoft choose to sue Google in Washington, when Google hired Kai-Fu Lee? [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/20/technology/microsoft- sues-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/20/technology/microsoft-sues-over- googles-hiring-of-a-former-executive.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As an employer, I'm quite fine with this - as the law still allows for an agreement to be made about soliciting clients.

If relationship with an employee and my company sours, all I really care about is that poor relationship not transferring to the relationship between my company and my clients.

Artificially locking ourselves into to a bad employer/employee relationship does nobody any good.

<comment><USER15> Your problem is when someone you have a good relationship with is seduced by something hotter and sexier.

<comment><USER14> I can see why's that would be frustrating, but my employees are not "mine" \- so they are free to go at any time and hence, I need to treat them well.

If an employee is seduced by an offer that doesn't work out - they can (and have) come back and can bring back what they learned.

One of the thing that I learned from such exits an re-entryies is that money is not always the best motivator - I used to run really lean to have a high payroll. Now I run lean to provide a good work environment - I can now fire bad companies that don't respect my employees.

<comment><USER16> > I can see why's that would be frustrating, but my employees are not "mine" > \- so they are free to go at any time and hence, I need to treat them well.

It's great to hear someone articulating that point on HN. There is too often a constant stream of suggestions to the effect employees are a form of chattel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A company I worked for recently had non-competes and non-solicit clauses. A new employees was negotiating their contract, and I told them to push back against the NC/CS clauses.

I spoke with the management and asked why they needed them, "to prevent problems" they said. I pointed out that they didn't have the non-competes for their employees in California and asked if they had problems there. They weren't aware of any problems in California, yet they thought it perfectly logical and needed to ask for them elsewhere.

<comment><USER18> because lawyers...

<comment><USER19> Not just funny, but true. When you invite a lawyer into a discussion, what is most straightforward way for them to show they are contributing? More clauses.

My firm's done negotiations with banks, and they all do the same vanilla business. Some have lawyers very close to the process, and some keep them at a distance. Of course there's always more back-and-forth when the lawyers are there, even though the business is the same for everyone. They try to sneak in ridiculous clauses and fight you on everything.

<comment><USER20> In my personal experience, that "wtf clause" embedding is because lawyers are at the coalface of dealing with the assholes of the business world. When it comes to rules-based systems like law, the assholes of the world are the ones that drive fractal-like complexity in the rulesets, with their continuous seeking of edge cases to externalize costs upon everyone else they can possibly unload to while profiting from finding said edge cases, and the subsequent response by the body of law or by a law instrument to counter that behavior. In other words, the assholes work the contract instead of the actual relationship.

We need something like Iain Banks' envisioned "slap drone" for the assholes, but in the meantime, I'll settle for discreetly negotiated relationships that create exceptions for my company. Law also needs to evolve more formalisms around invocation of privacy and other personal space / personal resource (time, especially) concepts that are currently not well defined at the moment, but are rife with predation by the assholes.

I have found company counsel to always be willing to strike clauses for me if I negotiate with them amicably and agreeably, and preemptively provide them a "trust but verify" action they can perform that absolutely cannot be faked by an asshole participant. Clauses ranging from "all your bases are belong to us" IP seizures, sky-high insurance requirements, invasive financial reporting, you name it I've probably seen it, have all be negotiated away in this manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wish NY did the same. In NY they get to own all your ideas both at work and "off the clock."

<comment><USER22> I cross/line out any portion of employment agreements that say such things... I've never had any push back about it.

<comment><USER23> I did cross out a bunch of non-compete and some ridiculous post-employment IP claim provisions and refused to take an offer from a midsize NYC hedge fund which constantly self-proclaims as "technology company applying talents to the domain of finance". Their contract was pure evil by California (and reasonable people) standards and I realized I wouldn't be able to negotiate my way out of those clauses (even though they seemed to have liked me enough in negotiating the salary). I made it clear to them that this is not a tech company's behavior. It was a hard decision for me to make considering my situation at the time and the offer's $$$ compared to SV big cos, but I eventually realized that _someone_ should take a stance against this form of slavery and we are responsible for not letting this crap perpetuate. If more people pay the cost of saying no, they'll have to cave eventually.

(throwaway because I don't like admitting I interviewed at a hedgefund publicly on the internet.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is good development!

I'm not sure how effective the law will be though. As others mentioned, those agreements are hard/impossible to enforce in court, part of the reason of which is that they are completely one-sided, vague and almost enslaving (we own whatever you create also in your own time, can't compete directly/indirectly for 10 years after leaving, can't use anything your learned while working for us...). But what stops the ex-employer accusing the ex-employee of stealing trade secrets and keep them in courts for ~3 years (and forcing to spend hundreds of thousands)? Cause, you know, it's hard to litigate with someone who has a few orders of magnitude more resources than you do.

As for non-solicit - I have a different opinion. Have seen companies breaking apart because some of the middle-managers/team leads decided to leave the company and take their team and the clients (with whom they had direct contact) with them. E.g. that's how Lycos Armenia's history ended.

<comment><USER25> This only possible because companies want to be able to fire their employees quickly so that means the employees can leave quickly. I know of one place (in the UK) with a one year notice term. You can't leave quickly so their business is secure but you are secure too as they have to give 12 months notice before letting you go.

<comment><USER24> 12 months for both sides? So if an employee wants to leave the employer can make them stay for one more year? Doesn't sound like a good thing to me.

<comment><USER9> 12 months is extreme. But it's extreme for both sides.

<comment><USER26> If the company goes under, good luck getting a year of pay from them.

It is better than many deals, but still seems to favor the employer for the reason most laws do, which is that when a deal is between a person and a company, the law never treats them the same and the company gets what I always see to be the favorable treatment (for example, company can't go to jail).

<comment><USER24> It's not always true, at least not everywhere. E.g. in my country (Armenia) the employee can leave whenever they like with just a two week's notice (except in situations when they have some central/important role in the organization - in that cases it's 1 month). The employer on the other hand has almost no way to fire someone if he doesn't have very good reasons for that (e.g. lost trust in employee). Mass layoffs are allowed if there is some global change (technology, economy, ..). In that cases the notice period in 3 months.

I guess we inherited this from the USSR (where corporate interest was not a thing) and just didn't have time to change yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If your employee is going to leave anyway, your best course of action is to encourage them.

Perhaps something along the lines of: "We're really going to miss you, but it's clear that this is a great opportunity for you. When it's time for you to move on from that role give me a call... I'd love to chat with you about roles back here that would be a good fit with that additional experience under your belt"

</comment><comment><USER28> Non-competes are the most anti-American, anti-business, and anti-innovation devices ever created. They are protectionism. They need to end everywhere.

Employment will only be more fruitful with freedom to create and innovate. It encourages companies to pay people with skills in their field. As the country moves to project/entrepreneur based contractual employment this is actually a big issue.

</comment><comment><USER29> There are companies out there that simultaneously proclaim the need for strict non-compete laws while also stating how difficult it is for them to hire qualified candidates, never seeing the conflict.

</comment><comment><USER30> "The law clearly violates corporate equal protection under the 14th Amendment and I am just waiting for a client to ask me to challenge the law."

Couldn't have picked a more biased source ;)

<comment><USER22> I think we need to establish a constitutional amendment that explicitly states that non-living entities (companies, corporations, etc) are not legally allowed to express opinions in so far as they donate to PACs or directly to campaigns. Also, that the congress or the states may limit the rights that non-living entities have beyond what an individual who works for or owns a non-living entity has.

"Corporate Personhood" is such a horrible idea that it just doesn't make any sense at all.

EDIT: for clarification, the 14th amendment refers to Person(s)/People, not corporations specifically... which is where my statement was coming from. It may not be a popular subject, but the fact is that corporation rights exceed that of people at this point.

<comment><USER31> On the contrary, if corporations didn't have personhood, we could not sue them when they did wrong, or enter into contracts with them.

Personhood has its own challenges for sure, but it originates more to protect people than it does to advantage corporations.

<comment><USER32> The point that's being missed in this discussion is that corporations are abstract entities defined by the state and society, ideally for society's benefit (otherwise why the hell would or should they exist, and also the original corp was for public benefit). These abstract entities can be given attributes, rights, relationships, etc. as needed, but they do not have any inherent properties in and of themselves.

Corporate personhood is an analogy, and a poor one at that. Many of the properties we assign to personhood are not suitable for corporations.

<comment><USER31> I dunno what gives you the impression that I've missed that point, really, but the scope of your message, which comes across to me as "perhaps we could slightly restructure the rights and responsibilities of corporations to better fit what we see as their role in society" is dramatically different from "Corporate Personhood is such a horrible idea that it just doesn't make any sense at all."

Both statements are equally true, as is my rebuttal. We perhaps could reframe the rights of corporations, but abolishing personhood would likely make the situation far worse than it makes anything better, as we then lose the ability to enter contracts with or sue corporations.

Much of the abilities of corporations that stem from personhood are commensurate with their other roles. I personally don't see a problem with corporations having representation, as those same corporations are otherwise bound by the laws of the land. Despite the "Wal-Mart is not a person" rhetoric, it's worth noting that many corporations are sole proprietorships, or, rephrased, people, and if they have the responsibility of obeying the whimsy of the legislature in the myriad regulations they are responsible to perform (worth noting, corporate responsibilities are typically far more burdensome than personal responsibilities) that they have the right to speak out against that whimsy where they wish.

That isn't to suggest that my word is definite, and there's definitely wiggle room to restructure, but as it stands, corporations have burdens, and knee jerk responses neither obviate nor necessarily better the proportionality of their rights in response to those burdens. Ut totum, abolishing personhood is, I think, as horrible an idea as mandatory mediation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Let's pack up all the Silicon Valley engineers and move to Hawaii ;)

<comment><USER34> Sadly it's a much cheaper place to live.

<comment><USER35> Housing maybe, although not the stuff I have imagined in my head. Everything else is really expensive in hawaii though because of shipping costs and lack of scale.

<comment><USER34> Cost of stuff is only important if you spend all of your money on stuff. With a tech salary, the cost of food going up 15% should be nothing compared to the rent you will save.

<comment><USER22> You think the cost of food is only 15% more? That's funny.. still not enough to offset the cost of housing in SF though. Been looking at moving out to San Jose (to work in Los Gatos, that's expensive to live in), and need to make about 75% more to offset the cost of housing and taxes than I do in Phoenix.

I totally understand why some large companies would put their IT hubs in Texas or Arizona now. Relative to the cost of living, we have it pretty good here.. I don't want to be outside in June, July or August though.

<comment><USER34> What are you talking about? I was pointing out how expensive SF is and how you might hit a 15% higher food cost in Hawaii than SF. But that will be offset by the massive amount you will save in rent.

<comment><USER35> Okay, but if you're only talking about SF then that's pretty silly. Because there are parts of the bay area that are much cheaper although I get that even they are expensive. But if you're paying to live in SF proper or Palo Alto proper you're paying a premium for either a low commute or to be around other tech people or both. You can find places that are affordable in plenty of parts of the east bay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wish there were a Presidential candidate that would make come out strongly against these things. Left or right, I'd vote for him/her. Unfortunately, most Americans probably are not affected and thus do not care.

</comment><comment><USER3> The question I have is "Why limit this to High Tech"?

</comment><comment><USER37> Lets see Illinois do this as well!

</comment><comment><USER38> Why is this limited to just the high-tech industry?

<comment><USER39> The individual citizen (!) who lobbied tirelessly for this bill tried to get a broader version passed in the previous session. Unfortunately as bbanyc45 points out there was too much opposition from entrenched interests for that to pass. So he tried again (which is pretty admirable), this time using narrower language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Good for Hawaii! Georgia went the other way. My advice to anybody is to not sign them if you are asked to. They are bad for everybody.

<comment><USER30> Doesn't work in my experience. I started not too long ago at a startup whose founder actively publicly campaigns _against_ non-competes. Yet there was still a non-compete in my employment contract, and they wouldn't let me strike it, presumably due to pressure from their lawyers regarding potential investors.

They have laudably since removed the clause, even retroactively from current employees' contracts, but it just goes to show how little bargaining power employees have in the arena of employment contracts.

<comment><USER41> Investors and banks are the root of the problem when it comes to non-competes. They insist that companies include these in all employee agreements.

If you live in a state where non-competes are legal, and if you are a job candidate and they refuse to let you strike the non-compete, then push back with the following: If employment is terminated by them and not you, ask them to pay you 100% of your salary during the non-compete duration so you can go on "Gardening leave". If they refuse to do this, then decline the job offer.

Oh, and make sure you state that you need to see everything up-front I will need to sign in the next 6 months as an employee in the offer documentation package. Some ethically-challenged companies wait until you have accepted the offer and hit you with the non-compete and invention agreements on your first day of employment with a "sign or be fired" requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> My understanding is that if non-compete clauses are unreasonable then they they are generally unenforceable. As in if they put undue hardship on you finding employment elsewhere. It seems the exception is usually up at the senior leadership and C-level where strategic intelligence comes in to play. (joe/jane-coder not so much.)

<comment><USER43> Unfortunately "unreasonable" is something that generally requires a court to define. That's a big burden for a worker to bear even in the most justified cases.

<comment><USER34> especially when said worker that bothers to sue is unemployed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> How does it work out in the US wrt what you can bring with you to a new employer, where non-compete agreements are outlawed? Is all information then free game? European countries tend to have it in national legislation that you can't disclose important trade secrets.

</comment><comment><USER45> Are there any clear and concise sources regarding non-compete and non- solicitation clauses and their enforceability in various states? Basically, some kind of primer on the topic?

</comment><comment><USER46> Good for Hawaii!

MA has tried to do this recently but sadly the big corporate interests were able to bribe the pols; not a surprise really since MA politics are completely corrupt.

</comment><comment><USER47> I wish this would happen in Ontario; I know a judge struck down a non- compete/non-solicit clause in one case but employers still stick that shit in.

</comment><comment> jon-wood Sadly the most important ideas are rarely the best funded. For example Zynga has vastly more funds at their disposal than Wikipedia, and I'd challenge anyone to argue that's the right way round.

<comment><USER48> Of course it's the right way around. Wikipedia has, basically, what it needs. I don't see how throwing more money at Wikipedia is going to accomplish anything.

<comment><USER49> Oh? And Zynga "needs" something? Or is going to accomplish anything nearly as worthwhile as Wikipedia? Or... ?

<comment><USER48> People enjoy the games, they pay for them, those payments accure to employees of the company and eventually investors who make it all possible. So the whole goal of the business is literally creating happiness.

The investors, having produced value, can then invest in something else.

The people playing the games are also producing value, because they earned their paychecks doing something productive for somebody.

Of course, all of this is true of every productive company and is readily evident in everyday life (unless you live under communism). You need to take an econ 101 course. Or maybe just pay attention.

<comment><USER49> I feel sorry for you, needing to resort to those kinds of statements. Whatever made you that way, please know that life gets better, and it's possible to draw inspiration for positive change from many different things around you. It'll get better, buddy, I promise.

<comment><USER50> Until our civilization collapses. Then it will get better for all except humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think there needs to be some middle ground. What is completely ignored by such an "all or nothing" law is the trade-offs required in order to create a high quality of life for individuals while also thinking of our society overall.

It is in society's interest for some industries to be protected - in order to avoid low-cost competitors and worse employers. We are over-reacting.

<comment><USER52> Middle ground in inherently non-equal relationships (employer-employee, landlord-tenant, etc) doesn't usually work because the areas close to the line need courts to sort them out, and courts cost money, which one side of the relationship doesn't have, so what happens instead is that the line inches slowly but surely in favor of the powerful side of the relationship because no individual can afford to challenge it.

There are some ways to combat those effects - for instance, large statutory damages make the reward larger, and unionization makes the individual risk lower - but by far the simplest and most direct is to sacrifice nuance to at least avoid a worst-case option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> In unrelated news, Hawaii's High-Tech industry collapses.

I think this policy is awesome and should be universal, but it seems a little crazy to enact it unilaterally - if a company can choose which state to operate in, Hawaii is going to lose out to all the others that allow unfair (IMO) employer protections.

<comment><USER53> Aren't non-compete clauses banned in California?

<comment><USER54> Pretty much, as long as you're an employee.

There may be exceptions if you're the owner of a business that you sell, or a member of a partnership that's dissolved, or part of an LLC that's being dissolved.

Useful info on US noncompete laws:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- compete_clause#Exceptions_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- compete_clause#Exceptions_-_valid_non-compete_agreements_in_California)</comment></comment></comment>


Vim: Walking Without Crutches - <AUTHOR> http://walking-without-crutches.heroku.com/

<comment><USER2> I tried to read this article, but found the inability to navigate it with hjkl too crippling.

At least let me click or scroll or something, limiting your page navigation to arrow keys is just barbaric.

<comment><USER3> This is a presentation created with <https://github.com/schacon/showoff>. You could add scroll or other bindings to the code, if you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm usually wary of anyone who argues that mouse and windowed GUI usage wastes precious time, because it tells me that this person prematurely optimizes, focusing on typing and screen navigation time when the idea-to-code bottleneck is actually the part where you THINK before you ACT.

The actual time spent hitting keys on the keyboard pales by comparison (or at least it should, unless you're producing unmaintainable code).</comment>


[Android][Game] Memk – game for your Brain - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.silverstuffgames.memk.lite

<comment><AUTHOR> Please feel free to share yours opinion.

<comment><USER2> I'd like a configurable delay before the balls appear. Often they seem to appear while my finger is still pressing "Next".</comment></comment>


Show HN: Ultra Easy Creating IRC Bot with New Python Mod - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/RobinManoli/ircutil <comment><AUTHOR> Although having coded for many years, this is my first open source project ever released!

I have been running my own IRC-bot on it, being stable for a few months.

Thanks for checking it out ^^

<comment><USER2> Curious about background readings for IRC chatbots that might be helpful for someone interested in the topic...the tutorial seems a bit schematic.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not really sure what you can read about it. Are you familiar with IRC? IRC is a text chat protocol which has been active a long time before Facebook, MSN and even ICQ.

So an IRC bot is a kind of service for IRC chatrooms. IRC bots may define words from a dictionary, do google searches, and so on. Usually the bots answer commands such as !define some_word or !google my search.

You can read more on wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC_bot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC_bot) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat)

You are right about the tutorial. I was thinking that if one is familiar with IRC it should be quite easy to get started with this.

<comment><USER2> Sure I've used IRC. That's a long way from programming against it.

I asked the question because I believe there are many professional developers who have a similar knowledge gap despite having vastly more programming experience than me.

That seems to often be the case with older technologies internet technologies. I mean it's probably easier to point to resources for writing Slack bots than an IRC bot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'm not sure what you are really after. I think you can find tutorials for established bot modules, such as eggdrops or how to write an irssi script.

The tutorial I made is based on the code provided in the examples. There are some common bot functions there, and explanations, which might be enough to get started with your own.

Did you look at my examples which were mentioned in the tutorial? [https://github.com/RobinManoli/ircutil/blob/master/examples/...](https://github.com/RobinManoli/ircutil/blob/master/examples/get_started_bot.py) [https://github.com/RobinManoli/ircutil/blob/master/examples/...](https://github.com/RobinManoli/ircutil/blob/master/examples/tutorbot.py)

One point with my module is that you can access IRC as raw text. (See how event.raw is used in get_started_bot.py). If you run this bot, you can observe how IRC looks like in text mode. Already from there you can parse any of those lines of text with Python to get started with your own bot.

Then you can use event helpers, (see examples). For example, if you want to respond to a message you use:

if event.MSG: ...

and to send a message, use:

mybot.msg(channel_or_nickname, mymessage)

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I appreciate it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: BitAuth IDE – An IDE for Bitcoin and Bitcoin-Like Cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bitjson.com/bitauth-ide-write-and-debug-custom-bitcoin-scripts-aad51f6e3f44 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

Bitcoin Script is the programming language used in bitcoin transactions. BitAuth IDE is a new open source project for designing advanced authentication schemes in this language.

BitAuth IDE includes a compiler with an entity/variable system and an interactive, "omniscient" debugger to view the entire execution of the program as you are typing.

You can learn more about the system in the link, and there's also a video walkthrough at the top of the article.

I'd love to answer questions and hear your thoughts! You can find the project on Github here:

[https://github.com/bitjson/bitauth-ide](https://github.com/bitjson/bitauth- ide)</comment>


Why India's writers are returning their literary prizes - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/10/economist-explains-16 <comment><USER2> Well why Indian writers are returning their awards, the reason mentioned of that is right to a great extent. But what this particular piece of news is doing? Isn't it aggravating the situation by saying the Modi is one responsible for communal violence in India? The real reason of the things that happened, like killing of a Muslim by Mob and murder of a writer, were things that had deep connections from the past. Well!! like the author of this article points out not offering condolence to a muslim, similar things happen when a Muslim mob kills Hindus, nobody even bother to cover such news. Why? Because Hindus are not minority in India.

I don't have any problem with what has been said about Modi, I have problems with the tone and the way it has been mentioned. The way everything has been described, encompasses every single Hindu in it.</comment>


So robots will make us their pets? I can't wait - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/29/robots-make-humans-pets-steve-wozniak-intelligent-machines <comment><USER2> This article is unbelievably idiotic. The author lumps all external forces that wish you no harm into a single entity that is somehow your master and is toying with you. This is how religions get started.

</comment><comment><USER3> A waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't believe it will happen.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why would they bother?

<comment><USER6> Because "pets" causes less outrage amongst humans than calling them "currency".</comment></comment>


Tiny, Cheap, Foolproof: Seeking New Component to Counter Counterfeit Electronics - <AUTHOR> http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2014/02/24.aspx

<comment><USER2> I finally got to see someone ask for Godel's incompleteness theorem in the wild. I've heard about it but never saw it before.</comment>


Show HN: Sync any Google Calendar you can access to your own MySQL database - <AUTHOR> https://app.getaika.com <comment><USER2> We built something like this internally and it was more tricky than we expected. Calendars are hard as are Google's different authentication methods and APIs, especially for service accounts at a GSuite level.

I can't imagine using a third party service for this as calendar data is pretty confidential. Would probably have saved us a lot of time if this were an open source project though so we could use our own database.

<comment><AUTHOR> We sure can relate! Setting up the sync logic and coming up with a reasonable first-cut database schema was considerably more complicated than we'd anticipated.

What was your motivation for working on something like this? That would be hugely helpful for us to understand!

We also just decided to go ahead and open-source it: [https://github.com/belvinlabs/proost- app](https://github.com/belvinlabs/proost-app). (Very rough; hit us up for help if you'd like to get involved.)

<comment><USER2> Amazing! We also wanted to do analytics to analyse and allocate some people's time better and use this to autoschedule work based on a pretty complicated internal system.

Will take a look!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This project grew out of our interest in understanding and optimizing time spent in meetings, but don't let that stop you from using it some other way. We're providing direct access to a MySQL database specifically so you can slice the data however you like, with any tool you please.

Questions? Feedback? All very very welcome!

<comment><USER3> Sqlite please. Or DB-agnostic SQL.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your input! As future features require continuous syncing between calendar data and the database, SQLite is not really an option.

We chose MySQL based on the following requirements:

\- It should be easy to write data to a database created by us, or hosted (on- premise) by a customer due to the sensitive nature of the data (which excludes Google Cloud Spanner and Amazon Aurora)

\- As the purpose of this data is analyzed, the DB should be compatible with most BI tools (which excludes SQLite)

\- There should be no vendor lock-in

\- Due to the analysis purpose of this tool, we prefer a database that focusses on read performance vs write performance (MySQL > PostgreSQL)

\- The Calendar Events table can grow long and we don't anticipate it getting wide, which favors row-based databases vs column-based databases (MySQL > Redshift)

\- I personally use the WITH and WITH RECURSIVE statements a TON when doing analysis which originally excluded MySQL, but with the launch of MySQL 8, that no longer was an issue.

\- We can easily build export functionality to SQLite

For all these reasons, we thought (and think) that MySQL 8 fits the use case quite well and we can relatively easily support other RDBMS databases if needed. Would love to hear your thoughts!

<comment><USER3> > \- There should be no vendor lock-in

Then why only support MySQL?

<comment><USER4> MySQL seemed a good start and we'll roll out more options upon request, but we first want to see some engagement and get some feedback before investing in that.

To test out how hard it would be to support another DB type, we already have a branch working that writes to a Postgres DB, which was a minor adjustment. So: MySQL for now, but we are writing our code to easily support other DBs if needed.

There are migration tools available for almost any database type from MySQL

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would love this if it was open source and I could self host it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we've been thinking of open-sourcing it. We decided to go ahead and do it: [https://github.com/belvinlabs/proost- app](https://github.com/belvinlabs/proost-app)

We'd love to hear how you'd like to use it, whether in the comments here or through Issues in that repo. That's hugely helpful to us right now!</comment></comment>


Nietzsche on Solitude - <AUTHOR> http://www.hermitary.com/solitude/nietzsche.html# <comment><USER2> For the first time in many years I found myself in a big group of friends in a new city. Good social life is something I always thought I was missing and now I have it. I realized, though, that my problems are still there. Maybe I had put too many hopes into this, but I am rather disappointed. In fact, lately I came to appreciate again solitude and my alone times. I still think friends should be a top priority in life, but now I also think you need to reserve time to do stuff on your own, it gives you the chance to always try out new things.

<comment><USER3> Sure, it's always a question of balance - I enjoy spending time with my friends, but I need frequent and long breaks, which sometimes leads to confusion and misunderstandings ("Why would stay in alone tonight?"). Maybe it's an introvert thing but I'm often surprised when I see people that need other people around them constantly and rate time spent alone as wasted.

<comment><USER4> I couldn't put my finger on the phenomena until I read that comic one day: [0]. It's about energy generation and expenditure - extroverts gather their energy from human interaction, introverts have to _expend_ it on those social moments.

I keep sending this picture to people who know me personally and are surprised I consider myself introverted - after all, how someone who is seen publicly speaking so often and finds it easy to make friends can possibly be introverted? The answer is simple: I like people, but spending too much time with them exhausts me, and I _need_ to "waste time alone" to recharge.

[0] - [https://danineteen.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/dr-carmellas- gui...](https://danineteen.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/dr-carmellas-guide-to- understanding-the-introverted/) \- first link I found, it's been floating around the tubes for some time already.

<comment><USER5> I'm the same way, and I've heard that repeated a few times now.

I have to wonder though, does _anyone_ actually "recharge" when they're with a group of people or do they just have a higher tolerance for spending time with others before they need to be alone?

If you can't tell, I don't really buy the introvert/extrovert distinction and I haven't seen any evidence that anyone can spend unlimited amounts of time with others without recharging alone. From my own experience it seems like there's a continuum from "needs lots of alone time" to "doesn't need all that much alone time".

<comment><USER6> If you read through the comments here, there are people that go crazy when alone, and people which go crazy when in groups. It's kinda like saying you don't buy gravity. Sure, we don't fully understand all of the details, but to say the dichotomy doesn't exist isn't logical.

<comment><USER5> Well sometimes I go crazy when I'm alone, and other times I go crazy when I'm with a group. The reason I don't buy the dichotomy is that if these two things can be true for the same person, is there any value in making the distinction? They seem to describe moods (that some people have more often than others) rather than personalities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although preferring solitude, I have found that long periods put me at competitive disadvantage socially. I start forgetting how to make small talk and engage in all the social grease.

I once believed it didn't matter and the time saved could be better spent engaged in productive activity. But as I get older and have carefully observed what works and what doesn't, I have noticed that a good command of the social language is crucial to success. One is extremely unlikely to make much of an impact nor achieve big financial gains without it. That isn't to say one has to be nice to everyone... assholes with a good perception and practice in manipulating social situations often do very well for themselves. But you have to have command of the language. And you don't get this being by yourself all the time. I find this unfortunate because in my experience the vast majority of people aren't that great to spend a lot of time around. Most people aren't curious. Most people have little myopic views of the world that are badly mistaken. Most people are frankly pretty dull and I'd rather visit the dentist than talk w/ them at length. But I've come to realize this is a counterproductive view (even if it's technically true). The world we live in is made of other people and we do well when we learn to navigate the river we find ourselves upon. But truth be told, I'd still rather be locked in the closet reading an interesting article.

</comment><comment><USER8> "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." ― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

<comment><USER9> Out of curiosity, Nietzsche and Pascal had many intersection points.

See [http://nietzscheasfisherman.blogspot.com.br/2010/07/nietzsch...](http://nietzscheasfisherman.blogspot.com.br/2010/07/nietzsche- and-pascal.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's all about enjoying your own company.

I have always seen the ability to endure solitude as one of the primary reasons why some people are successful.

The ability to enjoy your own thoughts, process, reflexions and the self- discipline to stay with them no matter what they are is what build up intuition.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps that is the advantage offered by a trait like narcissism.

<comment><USER12> No, because narcissism does not mean: self-reflection, introspection, consideration for one's own thoughts, pondering ideas, inwardness, etc.

Rather, it would be more like this: I think I'm the greatest. I'm so much smarter than everyone else. Whatever I do will be extraordinary.

Narcissism tends to be empty of substance, because by definition it means an exaggeration.

It doesn't take long to realize that's of no benefit to a process of thinking when it comes to problem solving, invention, or innovation. The more time spent on congratulating yourself on artificially inflated views about your own abilities or accomplishments, the less time spent actually doing. Narcissism is a detriment to achieving great output, to the extent of the narcissism, as it's wholly a waste of thought and time.

<comment><USER11> I think you just made all that up! Narcissism is orthogonal to achievement, in the sense of having a drive to achieve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >go into solitude so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think. After a time it always seems as if they want to banish my self from myself and rob me of my soul.

I always liked this piece, as it fits with me being able to be alone for days on end, without missing anyone's company.

<comment><USER14> The flip side of this is people tend to get weird and ornery without a proper community enforcing standards of behavior. It's pretty common to not even realize how unacceptably eccentric you're getting. Bear in mind that Nietzsche wound up totally insane.

The traditional christian teaching is that solitude is bad. Man is a social animal and can only properly develop joined to family and community and church, fulfilling duties and obligations to each.

<comment><USER15> > The traditional christian teaching is that solitude is bad. Man is a social > animal and can only properly develop joined to family and community and > church, fulfilling duties and obligations to each.

I wouldn't ascribe too much significance or meaning to 'Christian' teaching. It has no basis in science or empiricism.

<comment><USER14> Whereas the grandparent post and Nietzsche's thoughts are thoroughly empirical...

<comment><USER15> Psychology is a science, yes, and it holds that time spent alone is perfectly normal and for a large section of the population absolutely necessary for mental health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Solitude makes me insane. Yes, I am more productive, but I also become highly unstable. It's a tradeoff. At the end of the day, I value my mental wellbeing more than my productivity. But good friends are hard to find, and I'd rather be alone than put up with the wrong people.

Edit: Now I really feel like reading Nietzsche again.

<comment><USER17> I relate to this. I like the way you make it clear that given a choice between sanity and productivity, you choose the former. But is this not a false dichotomy, I wonder? I hope!

For me, prolonged absence of close company quickly begins to feel like low- grade depression ... or general melancholy. I used to enjoy solitude, but the years and the birth of my children has shifted most of the time I used to crave for myself. I don't crave solitude as badly anymore. In fact I fear being left alone. Also our recent financial set backs and a few deaths in the family has left me questioning the idea of being productive entirely.

The funny thing is that I'm not entirely honest when I get the company I crave ... I begin to display fickle emotions of wanting solitude immediately because I feel I'm not productive.

I'm really in purgatory right now with exactly that: sanity vs productivity.

<comment><USER18> This makes me think of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. I don't know if its your kind of think but there is a link here somewhere [http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?9963-PDF- book...](http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?9963-PDF-book-Zen-and- the-Art-of-Motorcycle-Maintenance-by-Robert-Pirsig)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Solitude and Silence are foundation for individual growth as per Indian philosophy. In the words of Sri Aurobindo (1), a modern Indian philosopher and mystic,

"The love of solitude is a sign of the disposition towards knowledge; but knowledge itself is only achieved when we have a settled perception of solitude in the crowd, in the battle and in the mart"

1 - [http://nptel.ac.in/courses/109101002/16](http://nptel.ac.in/courses/109101002/16)

</comment><comment><USER20> No solitude no peace of mind. No peace of mind no innovation. No innovation no future.

I think it was Goethe, another great German thinker and poet, who once said: "In der Einsamkeit geschehen die größten Dinge." \- "In Solitude the greatest Things happen."

P.S.

I'm not sure if my 'tanslation' reflects the original meaning of the sentence. Please, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER21> Your translation seems good enough to me, but on the other hand I can't find a source for your quote using Google

<comment><USER22> Closest that I could find was: "Talent is nurtured in solitude … A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Taking this one step further, I wonder if increasing urbanization leads to more and more groupthink, because of increasing proximity. If solitude is key for forming a unique creative perspective, in effect to make sure you don't 'drink out of everyone's cistern' as Nietzsche says, living in cities would be a bad thing, rather than good.

<comment><USER7> "He who would keep clean among men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water. "</comment></comment>


35 Years of American Death - <AUTHOR> https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/mortality-rates-united-states/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found selecting the HIV epidemic to be particular amazing:

[https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/mortality-rates- united-...](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/mortality-rates-united- states/HIV-AIDS/)

And drug use disorders frightening:

[https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/mortality-rates- united-...](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/mortality-rates-united- states/drug/#2014)</comment>


Which language will replace C between D, Go and Rust? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Which-language-has-the-brightest-future-in-replacement-of-C-between-D-Go-and-Rust-And-Why?share=1 <comment><USER2> There is no replacing C. The world can't even move on from Python 2 to Python 3.</comment>


Inference and Regeneration of Programs That Manipulate Relational Databases [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://people.csail.mit.edu/jiasi/pdf/MIT-CSAIL-TR-2017-012.pdf <comment><USER2> "Results from our implementation highlight the use of the techniques to translate applications from legacy languages such as Ruby on Rails into more modern Python implementations "

Python: 20 February 1991; 26 years ago

Rails: 13 December 2005; 11 years ago

Whoever is spreading the lie that Python is _modern_ is doing an _amazing job_.

<comment><USER3> The wording of the article seems to suggest that Rails is a language.

Ruby: 1995; 22 years ago.

It does seem to me, though, that people are moving from Rails to Django and other Python frameworks. I have no data to support this, just my gut feeling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like it would be useful for the program-by-example paradigm.</comment>


JavaScript must die - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/09/javascript-must-die.html <comment><USER2> If we follow the idea of killing everything that's "insecure" then we will end up killing everything, because nothing is 100% secure. I vote for improving JavaScript, for example, by sourcing external code via Google Caja. We should also improve defense against XSS and CSRF attacks in today's most popular frameworks (because, a lot of the times it's not the JavaScript that's insecure, but the frameworks that developers use - - i.e. making it possible to source arbitrary HTML is a very bad idea, no matter if JavaScript is used or not [e.g. one can do malicious attacks via an image tag as well]).

<comment><USER3> > _If we follow the idea of killing everything that's "insecure" then we will > end up killing everything, because nothing is 100% secure_

Perhaps, but killing off the stuff that is obviously and demonstrably broken seems like a pretty sensible policy.

<comment><USER2> Killing one of the most popular languages isn't a solution, it's only wishful thinking. The situation with JavaScript isn't that bad, we just needs better tools such as a secure way to source external JavaScript and better protection against XSS and CSRF attacks... If these issues are solved, then 90% of the problems are solved.

<comment><USER3> We're entitled to wishful thinking. Wishful thinking gives us something to aim for, and then we can evaluate in realistic terms how far towards that goal we can get.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, everyday I'm using this wishful thinking thing in hopes they won't give me a COBOL project that day. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty silly really. (NoScript? deprecate js? aint gonna happen thankfully).

Many of the arguments are just arguments of why you don't include arbitrary untrusted javascript in your page. Many of the use cases of including external scripts in a page could be done exactly the same server-side, which would make them far more secure. But, it's extra work for websites to do that, so they often don't.

>> background-image: url('javascript:window.alert(1)')

Some browser seriously executes that js? I have not seen that work anywhere. (Just tested safari, firefox).

Perhaps a better answer would be to have browsers show you a small warning if the website is including js code from external sites, however, it's so common now that most websites would flag up. But it might cause people to rethink things a bit.

(Also as others say, the issues are not with the language javascript, but in the way it is used in browsers. Killing js wouldn't solve anything if you don't address the issues in the browsers).

<comment><USER3> What is 'trusted' javascript though?

There is no differentiation between 'trusted' and 'untrusted', which I think was the point that the presentation was making.

<comment><USER5> Sure there is (I agree js doesn't know the difference, but we do, and we are the music makers).

trusted: I wrote it / looked over the source code

untrusted: I pasted some <script src=[http://gonnaHackU.com/blah.js>](http://gonnaHackU.com/blah.js>); into my page.

Including <script> tags from external entities is always a potential security risk. And it's always better to do it serverside if at all possible.

<comment><USER3> Right, but that's just a social distinction. It does nothing to protect users from careless web developers, and it does nothing to help web developers be less careless.

Please, somebody think of the users!

There are obvious technical solutions to this, but people seem unwilling to acknowledge that they might even be necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is only one sure way to prevent all kinds of attacks involving javascript.

Never emit contents of any variable to the browser without treating it with htmlspecialchars() (or equivalent) first.

If you want your users to post formatted content either don't use html for formatting (use something like markdown) or parse the html to tree, and run it through whitelist filter that will let through only tags you want to pass, only attribute values that you want to pass, and only values of attribute that you want to pass (defined by narrow regexps that dont allow such thing as background:url(javascript:)).

To sum up never mix other data types with html (kept in static places like template files or read-only database tables), unless you are absolutely sure that they contain html you want to display, either by htmlspecialchars-ing them (safe and fast general policy) or by parsing and whitelisting (for cases that you really, really have to allow some html).

<comment><USER3> > _Never emit contents of any variable to the browser without treating it with > htmlspecialchars() (or equivalent) first._

That seems like one way of using a sledgehammer to needlessly burn server-side CPU cycles.

<comment><USER7> Compared to the cost of accessing the database, html-escaping plain text is basically free.

<comment><USER3> 'basically free' * lots of users = not free.

<comment><USER7> "basically free compared to the cost of something way more expensive" * lots of users = still "basically free compared to the cost of something way more expensive"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a difference between a language and an API. JavaScript is a very powerful language in itself that has features like closures to please professional developers but is also easy to grasp by novice or amateur programmers. This makes it ideal for the role of being a client-side script engine of the web.

There might be issues with the standard JavaScript API (I mean, the DOM) but this could be fixed by correcting the API, there's no need to "kill" the language.

<comment><USER3> Which API are you talking about?

I don't mean to sound condescending, but following the general tone of your post, are you sure _you_ know what an API is?

The take-home point for me was that the _execution model_ for Javascript is inherently poor security-wise. Changing this would require changing the semantics of the language (i.e. you would break most Javascript code in existence), at which point it essentially ceases to be Javascript (unless you want to start to argue about replacing axe handles and such, but the original point stands - you could take a new language which fixes the execution model and call it "Javascript", but it would still not be the Javascript we use right now).

<comment><USER8> I was, of course, talking about the JavaScript DOM API: <https://developer.mozilla.org/En/DOM>

<comment><AUTHOR> The DOM is unrelated to JavaScript's global variable/function/everything oriented nature, the ability to do stuff like redefine the Object constructor, the fact that there's no real protection between objects (e.g. guess the name of a variable or function and you have access).

<comment><USER5> The issue isn't that js has a global namespace, it's that scripts included on the same page all use the _same_ global namespace.

This could easily be changed/fixed in browsers without changing anything about js.

It'd be nice to be able to specify in a <script> tag if you want a new js execution context setup, and also what access you want to give that script to your own execution context.

For example, maybe:

<script src=<http://widgetmaker.com/wm.js> newContext=true permissions="modifyDom:false,readNamespace=false,passMessages=true">

<script src=<http://hitcounter.com> newContext=true permissions="NONE">

With such a scheme, everything is executing in completely separate contexts, with clear permissions about their interactions. Some script messes with the Object constructor? only affects its own execution context.

Saying a blanket "js must die" isn't really understanding the issues, as they are actually in browsers, not js.

It's like saying python/perl/etc is an insecure language and must die, because it usually shares the same filesystem between processes.

<comment><AUTHOR> The would help, but it doesn't eliminate the problems. For example, the JSON Hijacking attack would still work because the attacker would control the 'permissions' attribute in your proposal and allow himself access to the JSON object via modification of the Object constructor.

It also adds a layer of decision making on the part of a web designer. I believe it would be better to alter the language so that these global problems are eliminated at the language level. Because any decision making about the execution context are likely to cause problems themselves because people make all sorts of mistakes and they would have to understand what it means.

<comment><USER5> >> "because people make all sorts of mistakes and they would have to understand what it means."

I think this sums it up really. People make mistakes and make insecure software. Whatever language it is. I fail to see how swapping out js for anything else would solve anything. It's all pretty moot also, since it'd never happen.

The JSON attack again, isn't any inherent insecurity in the language, just in the way it is used within browsers.

Lets improve browser security rather than focusing on a language which has pretty much nothing to do with security issues. None of the examples you give had anything to do with the core javascript language. They were all about how it is used in the context of browsers.

Just to get this straight, one of your arguments is that since some browsers apparently execute the javascript inside css "url('javascript:...", the solution is to change javascript for some other language? Do you understand how ridiculous that seems?

<comment><USER3> Given that I object to the use of Javascript outside of browsers, you've basically negated (for me) any reason to treat the issue of language security versus browser security separately.

<comment><USER5> >> "Given that I object to the use of Javascript outside of browsers"

Fine. You seem to have something odd and bizarre against the language. Good luck to you and your quest.

You also don't seem to realize that swapping out js for some other language would mean exactly the same security issues, unless you actually fixed those security issues where they are - in the BROWSER.

If you would like to learn about the language, I'd recommend "O'Reilly Definitive Javascript". Also checkout Rhino.

<comment><USER3> > _You seem to have something odd and bizarre against the language._

It's not "odd and bizarre" - it's a belief that the language is fundamentally unsuitable for the things that people insist upon using it for, and reasonably well supported by my own experiences of the language, as well as the reported experiences of others.

> _You also don't seem to realize that swapping out js for some other language > would mean exactly the same security issues, unless you actually fixed those > security issues where they are - in the BROWSER._

I take it you didn't read my reasonably concrete proposals for the use of proof carrying code? It becomes a largely mechanical process to verify that the browser _and_ the language implement "security" in a sensible way at that point.

> _If you would like to learn about the language, I'd recommend "O'Reilly > Definitive Javascript". Also checkout Rhino._

Thanks. If you would like to learn about Horse and Pony care, I recommend "BHS Complete Horse and Pony Care".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Iteresting, how new language will solve problems with have little to do with the language itself?

<comment><USER10> Nowhere does he propose a new language built on the same foundation.

What he actually proposes if you read the presentation is more security for/around JS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but I do believe that it would be best to rethink JavaScript. Essentially you could start from a safe subset of JavaScript that remove the global nonsense and rebuilds with a proper object model that restricts how you can get a reference to an object.

Douglas Crockford makes a proposal for this in a recent presentation: [http://www.slideshare.net/webdirections/douglas-crockford- aj...](http://www.slideshare.net/webdirections/douglas-crockford-ajax- security-presentation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Computer security problems aren't that different from "real world" ones: it's a matter of trust. Either you believe that someone will do what you want, or they deceive you. While it's reasonable to have _some_ systemic protections, at some point it is entirely up to the individual.

You might leave someone to watch over your house, and they could decide to trash it; that violates your trust, but it doesn't hurt your neighbor's house. You don't tie up every citizen to make it impossible for anyone to ever trash another house; you simply deal with that one trust violation, and learn from the experience. Also, you should _tell others_ , to minimize how many suffer the same fate.

</comment><comment><USER3> I said as much in the blog comments, but I'll repeat it here too. The issues noted in the presentation, plus the fact that the language is a bit of a dog, is why I suggested proof-carrying code as a replacement for Javascript:

[http://www.plsadventures.com/2009/08/worrying-trends-in- prog...](http://www.plsadventures.com/2009/08/worrying-trends-in- programming.html)

(and got pretty well flamed for it, too)

</comment><comment><USER12> So let's presume that we come up with a better alternative, which this article doesn't suggest. By what mechanism do we replace all that is out there and ensure that the current js is not used anywhere by any of the bazillion web sites currently using it?

I think the horse is well out of the barn.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why is the language insecure in all of this? What is it, in the ECMAScript Spec, which makes the language insecure? Programmers who do not know how to write secure code will leave security holes when programming in any language.

I find JavaScript to be wonderfully expressive, allowing me a great amount of power.

</comment><comment><USER14> Javascript is now being used even in remote controllers today. See <http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/rise-of-javascript/>

It certainly is a useful language.

</comment><comment><USER15> And again a link for which the only interest is the short, attracting and more or less controversial title.

<comment><USER16> I read the title in the spirit of the classic _Unix-Haters Handbook_ : It is both tongue-in-cheek _and_ brutally honest at exactly the same time.

Though much of the suckage which inspired the the _Unix-Haters Handbook_ has been fixed... or at least finessed [1]... it's still the case that there are aspects of Unix that suck. But of course that doesn't matter. Unix isn't going anywhere fast. It has outlived many of its alternatives, and the remaining alternatives are either worse or have little traction. None of the _Unix- Haters_ were under any illusions about this: They would point out various features that were done better in other operating systems (old-school Mac OS, Windows, OS/2, perhaps even the Commodore Amiga though I don't remember that, and of course the late, lamented Lisp machine) but none of them seriously thought that any of these things had a chance in hell of unseating Unix, just as I suspect that jgc does not seriously think that Javascript will be replaced anytime soon.

Javascript and the DOM, like Unix, isn't something that was designed by a rational committee of experts, but it snuck up on all of us and is now ubiquitous, and the social and economic forces that built it in the first place will not let it disappear easily. To paraphrase Crockford, we should all thank god that JS is as good a system as it is, given the inauspicious conditions that surrounded its birth. But I'm perfectly prepared to hear jgc's argument that its security problems are so dire that you can't _really_ fix them while still calling the result "Javascript". That's important information. The first step in working through a hopeless situation is to understand the size and shape of the hopeless part.

\---

[1] Or, let's face it, in some cases we've all just joined hands, smiled, and agreed to _love_ the suckage. It's the industry standard!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sorely lacking from this article, even if we take it at face value, is any workable alternative solution.

</comment><comment><USER18> What reading list do you recommend for a javascript security newb?</comment>


How to Turn Cybersecurity Jargon into a Language Everyone in Your Office Speak - <AUTHOR> https://blog.varonis.com/cybersecurity-jargon-translated/ <comment><USER2> Nice. With this method you don't need the Xiaomi hub, just this Zigbee USB stick. You can control other kind of Zigbee devices, such as Philips Hue or Ikea bulbs with this as well and you don't need to worry about any data secretly being sent back to Xiaomi in China.</comment>


Ask HN: How should i present my skill sets with my cv - <AUTHOR>

Recently when applying for jobs i've come across fill in the blank type resume submission.
In the CV part I've been providing my skill sets as a list. What is the best way to list the skills with out just slapping key words and listing languages.
I start the list with "proficient in" and "excellent in". Seems thats what everyone does, and I want to stand out.
Thanks <comment><USER2> There are lots of things you can do - many of them depend on exactly who you are (ie. what jobs you're applying for as well as the experience you have), and some on the specific posting / submission engine you're facing.

Terms like "proficient" and "excellent" are usually not needed: you list your skills in order of your abilities - the most proficient are at the top / front of the list, so you can leave out those extraneous words.

Also, a lot of what you write will sound like standard tripe, but that's a good thing ... to an extent. You want to stand out from the crowd, but you also want to demonstrate that you understand the game being played here. In short, your resume should make it as easy as possible for the person reviewing it to match you to the job posting.

An example of where you should follow the same style as others is in using "action words". Don't say you are familiar with / proficient in project management, for example; say you have managed projects [of X size and scope]. Don't say you know Python; say you have contributed to an open source python project (and provide a link!).

Keywords are good. You can adapt / evolve your resume and cover letters based on the words and phrases you're seeing in postings. This is especially important when the target is not an employer, but a recruiter who might not even understand what a "J2EE Deployment Engineer" is, precisely. And how Weblogic is different than JBoss. So use their terminology - it shows you care. In times when I've been looking for work (or even just polishing off my resume for good measure), I start by gathering together a number (say, 20) of postings that sound like jobs I'd like - regardless of whether I'm actually qualified for them. I then look at the phrases and skills they're asking for; which ones are most common, etc.; and start creating a list. I will then review that list, refining it as I contemplate my own skills and experience, and then building up the terminology I'm going to use to describe myself.

Master these things, and then you can start working on how to stand out. I'm going to cut my comment off here for the moment, but here's one more thought: when listing past experience and when writing cover letters, an example can say a thousand things that will expand out your bullet points. As an example, say you're applying for an intermediate programmer job - they're asking for someone who knows php, and is a "front end rockstar" and works well under pressure, blah blah. You start off by saying "I've been building php websites for 5 years." (or whatever) And then you give an example "At my last employer, we were under extreme pressure to deliver a custom solution for a fortune 500 company. After helping our team derive a scalable architecture based on my DAL model, I was given sole responsibility for implementing the UI by building on the originally approved comps." With two sentences like that, you can show that you know your php, that you can handle the deadlines; that you know your way around the back end as well as the front, etc. And, again, provide a link!

HTH ... if you have any other specific points, I'd be happy to give you my $0.02.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much. I'm going to revise my resume. You've been more then helpful.</comment></comment>


Who Will Buy Facebook? (and why TC thinks Google is a possibility) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/20/who-will-buy-facebook/ <comment><USER2> They will IPO. TC and their false speculations are really getting old.

<comment><USER3> What if facebook got their full $6 billion price? It'd be one big buy for Google but it's not like Google is going broke.

<comment><USER4> I don't think Google can afford a $6 billion buyout. They're on track to make maybe $16 billion this year. Microsoft is probably the only software company with a decent interest in the web and the pocketbook to pay for a highly valued site. And the aQuantive buy is the biggest they've ever done (and probably will ever do).

<comment><USER5> This is (sort of) a misunderstanding of how most buyouts work. Google, were they to "acquire" facebook for $6B would almost certainly structure it as a stock-swap merger. This way the acquisition isn't a taxable event, and they can use stock instead of cash.

At GOOG's current market cap, $6B of dilution would be pretty minimal.

Not mention the $10B of cash equivalents (and growing, fast) on their balance sheet to buyback stock or even do a full cash deal if they were feeling crazy.

<comment><USER4> I suppose I was using "afford" somewhat loosely. I still think $6 billion would be a huge amount for Google to drop in one place, stock or (especially) otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't think an IPO is too big of a stretch for the Facebook people.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do all the mega-buyouts lately mean good things for new startups, or does it mean that all the potential acquirers have already spent too much money?

</comment><comment><USER7> I think facebook are in it for the long haul, might even do an ipo and be almost google sized themselves

<comment><USER8> They'll probably IPO, but there's no way they'll be Google-sized. Google is basically a money printing machine because the dominated the most monetizable activity on the internet: searching. People are looking for things to click on when they search, so if an ad comes up with something that's similar to what they're looking for, the click on it. On Facebook, people are looking for information about other people and generally zone out the ads, which is why they get such low clickthrough rates, as was reported a while back. That puts it on the opposite end of the spectrum from Google. In between are media sites, which are generally passive, but more conducive to clicking on ads than an active site where what you're looking to do is completely different from the ads.

They will be/are profitable and will probably IPO, but I don't think it'll be huge. The numbers don't justify it.

Unless they have something crazy up their sleeves, which is a definite possibility.

<comment><USER9> Remember, though, that nobody thought search was monetizable when Google dominated it. They didn't have a business model until almost 2 years in: at the time, the fad was to turn search engines into "portals" and cash in through banner advertising on the home page.

FaceBook also has the advantage of being locally-based: ads can be targetted very specifically _to people within range of local businesses_. People don't really search for restaurants within walking distance, and even if they did, Google doesn't know where they're located. Facebook does, however, and can display ads for local businesses that the user might not be looking for now but might want to visit later.</comment></comment></comment>


Smoking Banana Peels Is the Greatest Drug Hoax of All Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/smoking-banana-peels-1960s-donovan-mellow-yellow-hoax <comment><USER3> Can't find the image online, but the web remembers:

Mad Magazine #116, January 1968: "A San Francisco Trip". This Don Martin cartoon shows a hippie preparing some banana peel shavings in a frying pan, and trying to smoke the result in a pipe. Nothing happens. He angrily stalks away -- immediately slipping on the peel he cast aside earlier. He bashes his head (KLANG), and THEN begins seeing paisley-styled hallucinations. - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER4> I tried to smoke banana peels as a teenager. It is still the biggest headache I have ever had. The pain. For days. On a side note, we tried to smoke almost everything we could set on fire. Nothing we tried came even close to the pain inflicted by banana peel. Actually it wasn't the peel we tried to smoke. I don't know the English term, but it was those long strings on the side of the banana we dried and smoked. I have been told it they are pure protein and that was the reason why we got that massive headache. I have not investigated if that is true.

<comment><USER5> ...smoking protein gives you headaches? What? Why?

<comment><USER6> Ripe bananas have a lot of tyramine.....I guess???

<comment><USER7> Which can be active if taken with a MAOIs inhibitor and is outlawed in Florida.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A friend succesfully managed (once) to get it to work when we were 12. First we lightly grilled and boiled the bananas and mixed it with some reseve rolling tobacco that his dad kept above a kitchen cabinet in an old biscuit tin. We smoked one joint and then collapsed onto the sofa. It never worked again regardless of how many times we tried.

A few years later his dad invited us to smoke a joint with him while his wife was away - and let us into his secret stash of premix, squestered in an old biscuit tin, stashed above a kitchen cabinet...

</comment><comment><USER9> The hoax I wish would get around is that it is really good to smoke is dandelion roots. I love to imagine groups of teenagers running around at night digging out dandelions from random people's (especially mine) yards.

<comment><USER10> There are a lot of invasive species you can actually (theoretically) get high on. E.g. Phalaris, white mulberry, mugwort, non-native sweet flag, parsnips, etc.

Most (but not all) things growing in your lawn you can eat though, _if_ the area is free from toxins. The reason we have invasive species is because they came from somewhere else, and usually the reason they came from somewhere else is because they were what people ate before we discovered/invented better crops. Or at least this is true in New England and the mid-Atlantic regions, I can't speak for everywhere else.

<comment><USER11> "The reason we have invasive species is because they came from somewhere else"

Everything came from " somewhere else" if you take the long view.

<comment><USER12> Not an answer to parent comments, just wanted to emphasize that coming from "somewhere else" <=/=> invasive. Not an expert so there are likely edge cases but one example would be a meadow where many different plants grow, flowering from early spring to late autumn. Introducing a new plant could mean it finds its own niche in this system or could mean that it completely takes over the whole system, reducing the overall flowering period to a limited time and thus causing problems for pollinators. If the latter is the typical result, the plant would likely become classed as invasive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's a conspiracy! The cavendish were a plant by the government designed to not get you high. The old Gros Michel banana got you super high, I swear ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> This story happened in 1991. Like a lot of kids in high school I tried to smoke banana peels. They're wet and mushy and it was not at all obvious back in the days before the internet how you were supposed to process the things for smoking. The first time I tried it nothing happened, so I was pretty sure it was a hoax. But the second time me and a friend were bored so he had the idea to first boil, then microwave, then scrape out the soft bits and pan fry them until dry enough to smoke. We smoked this awful stuff and coughed for quite a while, but then discovered we were both extremely high. In 1991 I was very familiar with marijuana but this was quite different. Its been ages since I did stuff like that but I'd say it was like a less intense nitrous oxide, and it lasted for at least 4 hours. We tried several times after this to reproduce the recipe but had no luck. I have no idea how or why it worked that one time but it really did.

I know my friend didn't sneak something into the pipe because there is just no way he'd waste hours mucking around with banana peels if he had some drug to smoke laying around. Also I saw him attempt to make it again several times, cough his lungs out and get no happy results. It wasn't a contaminated pipe, we used a pipe freshly made out of a Coke can because banana peel will ruin anything you smoke it in. It really happened but I have no explanation for it.

<comment><USER15> This is exactly the sort of thing you'd say to make people who don't believe in the myth try to smoke banana peels anyway. "It worked that one time, oh, what a mystery, we must find the secret..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Off-topic: Is it just me, or is there a URL 9206 characters long in the html of that page? Starting :

      The lead singer of the band <a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/admin/articles/Drug%20scares%20are%20a%20dimebag%20a%20dozen,

Why? Is that a record? I guess not.

</comment><comment><USER17> Banana peels might be fake but you can get high off nutmeg....if you can stand to eat enough of it...I have zero personal experience with this.

[https://erowid.org/plants/nutmeg/](https://erowid.org/plants/nutmeg/)

<comment><USER18> I'll admit that I tried this once as a dumb teenager. I mixed a huge amount of nutmeg into some milk and chugged it. The experience was very slightly psychedelic and mild paranoia, but mostly just a disgustingly, overpoweringly horrible recurring flavor and scent of nutmeg for hours, which I could only describe as like being trapped in a prison of nutmeg. The mere thought of nutmeg made me nauseous for years after that.

<comment><USER19> For me at least it wasn't possible to consume enough straight up to feel the effects, but one time I put ground nutmeg into gel capsules and swallowed a ton of them. The first night I felt a mild sensation, but upon waking up the next day I was surprisingly high -- it's a bit like marijuana plus a pleasant warm feeling. Even in the capsules though I still felt a complete revulsion toward nutmeg for years afterward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember some friends trying it. It didn't work of course, but then we discovered nutmeg.

<comment><USER21> Why not scorpions?

[https://www.dawn.com/news/1252264](https://www.dawn.com/news/1252264)

<comment><USER20> That's terrifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The US prohibition of cannabis is by far the greatest drug related hoax of all time

</comment><comment><USER23> It's also a bitchin' Dead Milkmen song, but then maybe I'm just way too much into Philly culture...

<comment><USER24> Mellow.... it's so mellow.....

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The thin red skins from peanuts was another one from my childhood. Turns out they burn hotter than thermite and don't get you high. Not recommended.

</comment><comment><USER26> I remember reading about this in the Anarchist's Cookbook as a kid. I never tried it, and I never learned that it was a hoax.

<comment><USER27> One of my friends in middle school who had CompuServe downloaded the Anarchist's Cookbook and found this gem. We all believed it. But then he got into MOD files and forgot about banana peels before we got around to trying it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not jenkem?

<comment><USER29> Yeah jenkem is way funnier.

For those that don't remember Jenkem, the hoax was that you can get high by combining shit and piss in a bottle then putting a balloon on the opening and letting the baloon fill up with gasses for several days, and then inhaling that gas.

Absolutely foul and extremely lulzy.

<comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkem)

> On September 26, 2007, the Sheriff's Department of Collier County, Florida > issued an internal bulletin about jenkem based on a TOTSE internet forum > post by user "Pickwick", which included purported photos of the manufacture > and use.[6] "Pickwick" confessed it was a hoax around the time of the > internal bulletin.[14] In November of that year, officials at the Drug > Enforcement Administration said no reports of jenkem use had been confirmed > in the United States.[15]

<comment><USER30> I always thought it was a meme too, and surely no one was dumb enough to believe or try it... then I volunteered at the med tent at a Rainbow Gathering in Wyoming. I can confirm at least one use of jenkum in the United States.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My older siblings used to have little packets of "beadies" (Packaged dry banana skins rolled into thin tubes) that I used to try every now and then. Packaging looked a bit like incense. Then of course we have nutmeg.. [https://abcnews.go.com/Health/large-doses-nutmeg- hallucinoge...](https://abcnews.go.com/Health/large-doses-nutmeg- hallucinogenic-high/story?id=12347815)

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe that's why there was always money in the banana stand.

</comment><comment><USER33> It started with the Donavon song "Mellow Yellow". But he was singing about a vibrator which you definitely don't want to smoke

</comment><comment><USER34> I've always wondered if the hoax was due to (or inspired by) an ingredient of a variant of Ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi).

</comment><comment><USER35> We used to smoke dried banana leaves as kids back in the early 70's. Never heard of anyone smoking the peels.

</comment><comment><USER36> Hey, you get a little high from the CO ;)

</comment><comment><USER37> I did this when I was 14 after reading The Anarchist's Cookbook :)

<comment><USER38> I never actually did it, but I was around the same age when I read about this on TOTSE ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOTSE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOTSE)) back in 2000-2001.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I thought it was a Born Again Christian plot to get more Atheist Nightmares into the hands of hippies.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A)

</comment><comment><USER40> I tried this when I was 12 or 13... from textfiles.com.

</comment><comment><USER41> "They call it mellow yellow." "Quite rightly."

</comment><comment><USER42> Smoking composted tomato peels is much better!

</comment><comment><USER43> Not statins?

</comment><comment><USER44> Anarchist cookbook also said that nutmeg would make you fry. Didn't work though for me, However thier morning Glory seed recipe was right on the money

<comment><USER45> The nutmeg thing is true, but you do have to eat a considerable amount of freshly ground stuff, which is revolting. And it's not a good trip, either.

<comment><USER46> That, and the stuff is straight-up toxic in the kinds of doses that can get you high.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037907380...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0379073800003698)

<comment><USER47> Most deliriants/anticholinergics are toxic at the doses you need to take for strong psychoactive effects.

It's a dangerous game to play around with such substances. Very interesting results however if you're willing to take the plunge. You have full-fledged hallucinations of objects and events, and dear god the spiders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> FYI instead of the recipe in that ancient Rome I have personal experience that 30 grams of clean washed seeds ground up in a blender to " black pepper " consistency then mixed into a ice cream shake ( in the same blender) will produce a desirable result. Collect the seeds yourself , this plant is a weed in cali, it's everywhere and once you have learned to identify it you will be happy you did I've had the best luck with the brilliant violet colored flowers although there is a cream colored variety that works well too, it's just not as agressive as a noxious weed as the violet type. The cream colored variety is a much smaller vine

</comment><comment><USER48> Other than CBD oil.

<comment><USER49> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2503660/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2503660/)</comment></comment>


Can we ever really know another person? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/27/dark-matter/ingenious-nicholas-epley <comment><USER2> This reminds me of a passage from Aldous Huxley's essay on mescaline, _The Doors of Perception_ :

 _We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to Permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or "feeling into." Thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, can put ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly Pickwickian sense) in their places. But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even nonexistent. The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience._

As thoughts like these have swirled in my head over the years, I have become somewhat obsessed with the question of how my words and actions are interpreted by others, to the point where I often feel like I have no idea what they are thinking. Sometimes I think I have lost some cognitive ability, but others I feel it is just the acknowledgement of the author's sentiment "I assume that my mind is a pretty good simulation of yours, and it's just not."

[https://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfP...](https://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPerception.pdf)

<comment><USER3> It's a nice quote but just not true. The experience of true union exists but is so far phenomenologically from the every day life of an average city dweller that most people are unaware of it.

<comment><USER4> > The experience of true union exists

> Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except > through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable.

I'm sorry but what? Can a union of a blind person and a person with sight communicate "redness" to the blind person such that the both have the exact same representation of red inside their head?

If you have anything on this, I would love to read it.

<comment><USER5> Not responding to the parent but these links:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect)

[http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to- bec...](http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-become- batman)

Might shed some light on your question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > What we did is we had them predict on a zero to 10 scale how members of the > opposite sex would rate them in terms of their attractiveness

> accuracy was not significantly better than chance

I think this experiment conflates people having different opinions on attractiveness with the inherent difficulty on mapping the attractiveness spectrum onto the scale of 1 to 10.

I'd be interested in an experiment that instead had participants order the attractiveness of many photos from most to least without assigning numbers to them. The photos should range from grotesque to average to supermodels. I think almost everyone would agree on the broad ordering, with some variation in exact ordering.

Then, to capture the personal aspect of the original experiment, subjects could insert themselves into the ranking and see if the opposite sex agrees. My hypothesis is that performance would be far better than chance in this scenario.

<comment><USER7> Probably even easier to just show pictures in pairs and have the participant to select the one they think is more attractive.

<comment><USER8> So, _Facesmash_ [1] instead of _Hot or Not_ [2].

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Facemash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Facemash)

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

<comment> shawn-butler [http://pickthehottie.com/](http://pickthehottie.com/) was fairly popular and predated Facemash by several years.

Wouldn't surprise me in the least that Zuckberg would copy it. Seems to be his modus operandi in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >"if you ask people to psychoanalyze themselves, ask them why their brain is doing this; or you ask them to report on mental processes, why did you make this decision versus that one—psychologists find over and over again that basically what we're doing in those situations is we're telling stories. We're making sense of ourselves without having actual access to how our brains are causing those decisions."

This quote is so telling in how little people know about themselves. When you analyze yourself, you're telling a story, not conducting a scientific analysis. Unlike science, stories can be fictional. This is why it's so easy for people to lie to themselves and paint a rational world around what is essentially mob mentality.

It's also why I repeatedly see good, moral people do great evil and be completely unaware of it. They justified their actions to themselves with a story... a fictional story.

<comment><USER10> So in a way, we all live in an echo chamber of just one individual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems completely obvious that individuality is the basic state, and then we come together to form friendships, families, societies. But I would hold that actually our collectivity and connectedness is actually logically and historically prior to any individuality -- we evolved from social animals, we are still social animals, and even the language with which we say "I am an individual" is a testament and an inheritance from this collectivity. In fact, our feeling of separatedness might be the illusion, not our feeling of union.

Of course there is a Marxist angle to this: the relations of production in Capitalism are based on contracts between individuals, so we become steeped in this ideology from before we are even born and it just becomes "obvious", even though it makes even less sense than earth's seeming flatness.

Even the nasty, brutish, short competitive phase of human history was likely not competition between individuals but between groups whose unity and homogeneity was probably almost total. Anyone who was not one with his / her group was probably ostracized, then died shortly thereafter.

</comment><comment><USER12> Now, personally I can fully understand why Americans view 9/11 one way and Al Qaeda another. Is it really so hard?

That said, I'm neither an American nor a member of Al Qaeda so maybe it doesn't count =)

</comment><comment><USER13> My girlfriend just came home and I told her the study about rating yourself 1-10. She replied, "Everyone already knew that. I learned nothing from these two minutes."</comment>