Widely-Used Food Additive TBHQ Impairs Immune Responses to Influenza Infection - <AUTHOR> http://www.sci-news.com/medicine/e319-immune-responses-influenza-infection-07071.html <comment><USER2> I always want to see the absolute changes in outcome. Not just relative. No article ever publishes this, and this article doesn't publish either.

Is the effect cumulative, how much time does it take to recover. Will fasting help/harm the effects of the flu under said conditions. I mean, there's so many compounding factors. Also, it's in mice, so may not translate anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone have any slides or a preprint of this? I've grown quite skeptical of studies like this in general due to poor statistical practice.

<comment><USER4> I don't immediately see a copy of the paper linked from the article, but it is a study on mice, which doesn't mean the results transfer to humans. The title of the linked article should end with "in mice".

That said, it looks like the study was actually testing the effects of the chemical on specific proteins, which are common between humans and mice, and refers to other related studies that were actually done on humans. The article quotes one of the study authors as saying more work is necessary to actually connect the chemical in question with those proteins. In other words, they are still investigating a plausible pathway to explain how this chemical actually affects immune response in mice. That may or may not transfer to humans.

One thing I found a little concerning is there's no mention of effect size. That is, how did they measure immune response, and what was the actual effect on health? The summary says "more severe weight loss," but how severe? How much longer was the illness?

The article also doesn't explain why this chemical is used in industry. Even if it causes an immuno-suppressive effect, would banning its use cause other problems, like increased food spoilage? What's the trade-off? Without knowing what the chemical is used for, and what the effect size on the mice was, it's hard to come away with any value judgment from this article and the linked summary.

Anyway, sounds like an interesting thing worth following up on, but I wouldn't go around examining your ingredients labels based on this one study.

<comment><USER3> >One thing I found a little concerning is there's no mention of effect size. That is, how did they measure immune response, and what was the actual effect on health? The summary says "more severe weight loss," but how severe? How much longer was the illness?

Yeah, this was really my big question. Nothing about sample size or effect size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Widely if you eat oily snacks (microwave popcorn, ...) and instant soups. If you mostly cook at home, you're pretty unlikely to be exposed to this.

<comment><USER2> I'm curious about cumulative effect and how long it takes to undo. Considering that was a lot of what I ate until 3-5 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> No more Recees Peanut Butter Cups (tm) :(

<comment><USER7> If you are close to a Trader Joe's, their PB cups [0] are better IMHO.

[0]: [https://www.traderjoes.com/FearlessFlyer/Article/4208](https://www.traderjoes.com/FearlessFlyer/Article/4208)</comment></comment>


Build a document search engine using Xapian and Pylons - <AUTHOR> http://invisibleroads.com/tutorials/xapian-search-pylons.html <comment><USER2> Why would you do down this route now that elastic search exists? The article doesn't seem to mention alternatives so I'd be interested to know if the two approaches were compared or if some limitation of ES led to going down this route?</comment>


SpaceX plans major expansion at KSC with futuristic launch control center - <AUTHOR> http://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2018/06/08/spacex-plans-major-expansion-kennedy-space-center/685098002/ <comment><USER2> This article is from 2018.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry but in Florida we do our best to stay at least one year behind ;)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Jumper, a robot to help you exercise every day - <AUTHOR> http://get-jumper.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, I recently built this FB Messenger bot to help me exercise more regularly. I found that I was pretty off-and-on-again for exercise and wanted to be a lot more consistent. I feel _so_ much better when I exercise every day. I originally built this for just myself, but I was asked by a few other people if they could use it - so I went ahead and launched it publicly.

I know, it's pretty basic. With the amazing exercise apps and services out there, what use is a silly little bot like this? I can't really give you a solid answer - but I will say it's absolutely helped me exercise significantly more than I had before. The daily reminder in the morning gets me in the mindset of wanting to do something active each day.

Let me know what you think. :)

<comment><USER2> Looks very nice and a nice idea :) you could expand the idea to other fields (like going over bills, etc.) Makes me think of a backward Tamagotchi where the computer takes care of the human :)

<comment><AUTHOR> "backwards Tamagotchi where the computer takes care of the human" has got me down a deep dark hole of thought about computers taking care of humans now haha. Simple statement, but lots to unpack there.

Having "robots", whether chat bots or something else, look at your data and make suggestions on how to improve is something I find super interesting. One for your finances certainly is a n interesting idea.

<comment><USER3> Interesting that the chat dynamic worked out so much better for this use case than an app with notifications. In theory, you don't really need an interactive chat agent for any of these use cases, but I guess what's being posited (by you and the rapidly growing 'chat bot industry' at large) is that personifying a UX is more engaging than the alternatives.

Do you think this working better for yourself (and your friends, I take it) is a result of motivational agents being inherently more effective as chat bots than traditional push-based systems (SMS/emails/app notifications)?

<comment><AUTHOR> So _this_ the crux of this whole project. You nailed what is "interesting" here. This should, by no means, be more effective for anyone who's currently using it. This bot is pretty damn simple. But the personification is seemingly the reason it "works". I did actually spend a reasonable amount of time writing (what I think) are kind of goofy/silly/funny/motivational responses to things which I think has made this project fare much better than simple "You worked out? K thanks." style responses.

Example: My girlfriend joked recently, after starting to exercise a lot more after a short hiatus, that she was "rekindling her relationship with Jumper." I found that statement pretty deep - that's not something she would have said about a standard exercise app (I think?).

<comment><USER3> Hah that's really great. Thanks for elaborating!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read the title here and thought it was an actual robot. Maybe s/robot/chatbot/ ?

It looks very useful. Congrats on shipping this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably should have said "chatbot" instead of robot. :/ And thanks for the congrats! I really appreciate you letting me know your impression on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're looking for useful features to build I would find a well being tracker very useful. Exercising isn't my problem. Injuries are. If the bot would manage my schedule so if my back is stiff it recommends certain exercises or if I haven't done cardio in a while it recommends that instead of weights etc it would be fantastic. With ML I can imagine being able to build a statistical model off the back of this that would be able to perfectly curate a program for optimal health based on frequency of exercise, type of exercise and reported well-being.

<comment><AUTHOR> This sort of stuff is really interesting to me. I think _any_ app/service can use ML though, it doesn't have to be a chatbot. I'm actually surprised we aren't already seeing more of this. I feel like most all fitness trackers are more concerned with the very specific details of your current workout (speed, heart rate, etc) but don't look at the wider trends across many days, weeks, months, etc.

If anyone has seen a service that does this, I'd love for you to share it here!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the most annoying things about physical fitness is you can't really outsource it. In the end, you have to do the work, with a trainer or whatever. There's just no way around it short of perhaps steroids speeding things up.

For cardio, the most tolerable way I've found to do it everyday is to get a heart rate monitor, get a machine that can adjust difficulty based on a target heart rate and then do that for 30 minutes with headphones and a good podcast or audiobook on. I try to ignore everything but the podcast. Things seem to work OK that way.

<comment><USER7> I've just recently gotten into [http://zwift.com/](http://zwift.com/), it's the only thing I've found that makes riding indoors tollerable, almost fun. The power meter on the bike connects to zwift, the more power you put out, the faster you go. There are a few virtual locations you can ride around, ride with other people. There are also workouts, where you need to hold a certain power for certain time. The workouts are scaled based on the power you can do. I prefer working out with power than heart rate since it responds a lot faster and is less affected by other things going on in your life. Mind you, a bike, a trainer and a power meter is pretty expensive if you don't already have them.

<comment><USER5> Does this work with rollers?

<comment><USER8> Yes, but you need an ANT+ power meter on the bike to make it in anyway realistic. More info here:

[https://support.zwift.com/hc/en-us/articles/203968635-- Setti...](https://support.zwift.com/hc/en-us/articles/203968635--Setting-up- zPower-Classic-Trainer-Rollers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well done. Great idea and execution!

Have you giving any thought of using a different platform? I like the idea of writing a chat bot myself that would work iOS built in Messages but I can't seem to think of a way around it short of using SMS and Twillo which would start to get expensive. Anybody have any suggestions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!! :D

I actually started out on SMS with Twilio! I switched to Facebook Messenger simply because it was starting to get expensive and I really started to miss the niceties of using a proper chat platform: thing like predictable message delivery, getting someone's first name without asking, and easy/free image embedding.

I'm going to try and do Google Hangouts and Slack next - unless someone has other good ideas for platforms to support?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice idea!

Is the chatbot implementation intended as a prototype or the final product? I think it keeps the barrier to entry low and it's got a bit of fun novelty value to it, but the value in your (great) idea comes entirely from the fact that it's quick and painless to use, and it could be 10x quicker and less painful with virtually any interface besides a chatbot.

Mobile keyboards _suck_ , and nothing highlights that more than seeing a cool idea that could deliver a good value to me by simply asking me to tap one or two large-ish buttons once per day, but that I instead need to chat with.

Edit: I realize there's a large personal preference component to this as well. I personally would rather have a button or two to tap, but I do see how the chatbot-powered anthropomorphization could be a very effective motivator for people who like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> So the "friction" conversation about a product like this is pretty interesting imo.

One one hand, the bot is easy to get started with: Almost everyone already has the software (assuming Jumper works on multiple chat platforms) to get started right away with very little friction or commitment (no "signup" required).

On the other hand, once you _are_ started - the chatbot interface is certainly higher friction than a traditional app would be (say, with two big buttons as you suggest).

But the while the app approach is lower friction once you've started, getting people to download and install an app is quite tough. Have you seen the latest data on how many apps the average American downloads in a month? It's zero!!! Crazy eh? So that barrier is one I wanted to avoid.

In the end though, the reason I chose the chat platform and the reason it _is_ the final implementation for Jumper is that I've been super interested in the power of conversational interfaces and their ability to change human perception. Don't get me wrong - the "chatbot" craze is pretty exhausting to me too and I feel most chatbot products/services could have been built in a more traditional interface and have been far more successful. In fact, I built a failed chatbot for analytics not long ago. But when it comes to motivating people to exercise, I think having a conversation with an "exercise buddy" is more likely to get people to exercise. I mean, if I didn't believe that, I would have just used one of the currently available fitness apps and set up simple reminders. Of course, I may be very wrong here haha. But so far it's working!

<comment><USER10> Awesome, and good reasoning all around. This is indeed absolutely worth a shot; you may have found a really great fit for a chatbot. I'll be keeping an eye on this one, congrats on shipping!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am working on an app in a similar space; although as a bot is a novel idea I had not considered. But it looks like you're doing a lot of things right in creating an experience thats engaging and memorable. Plus you've got a great name!

Great job on that landing page too - crystal clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much! Honestly, I think I'm more excited about the landing page than I am the chatbot at times haha. I built it using [http://tachyons.io](http://tachyons.io) and I'm not sure I've ever had more fun writing HTML/CSS. Definitely check out that CSS framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This actually feels like a useful application for a chat bot as opposed to a gimmick, well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! I've been operating Jumper for ~4 months with a small group of people and the conclusion most people have made: It's useful because it's very lightweight and the personal style interaction helps with motivation more than say, a RunKeeper iOS push notification. Whether that conclusion holds true for lots of people, who knows! But it's sure been a fun project so far that's helped some people get into better shape. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting idea and execution. As mentioned above, I imagined a physical robot, not a chatbot, so might need some clarification in future messaging revisions.

Also interested to learn more about how you plan to utilise user data to make the platform smarter.

</comment><comment><USER14> Awesome. I have been experimenting with Facebook Messenger bots as well. Did you use any existing framework/tool to create the bot?

Also, I am building a service that allows bots to gather actionable feedback from the users. I am looking for some testers. Let me know if you would be interested in helping out. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Somewhat off topic - has anyone used a desk bicycle (pedals) or treadmill for a significant period of time? Being able to do that for an hour every workday would be an amazing health improvement basically for free (in terms of time), but I have difficulty imagining anybody sticking to it.

<comment><USER7> Yes, one of my co-workers had a spin desk. He said you couldn't really ride with a heart rate above 100 bpm and still concentrate. He was doing a huge amount of very low intensity riding, it didn't have much benefit, but hugely increased appetite.

<comment><USER15> Ouch - worst of both worlds!

<comment><AUTHOR> No kidding - happy to hear some feedback about how well those actually work. I've been wondering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Would love to see an SMS option! I don't keep fb messenger installed on my phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Jumper actually started out as SMS. It operated solely on SMS for about 2 months, but the unpredictable message delivery, high cost or messages (esp. images) and lack of access to user profiles made me switch.

Is there another chat platform you'd prefer to use? Slack? Google Hangouts? Telegram?

<comment><USER17> Not the person you're responding to, but aren't there service plans with unlimited texting and images? I'd definitely use this service if I could text.

<comment><AUTHOR> No unlimited plans from Twilio, unfortunately. [https://www.twilio.com/sms/pricing](https://www.twilio.com/sms/pricing)

Maybe another SMS service offers that? If so, I'd certainly consider SMS again.

<comment><USER18> I'd be fine paying for it to cover the cost of SMS. Like parent, I'm not willing to use facebook to get access, even for free.

One option would be to re-enable the SMS option for people who deposit money to cover the SMS fees. Mark them up 100% (so 2c per SMS or something) and you'll have a built-in profit margin.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not a bad idea. If people covered the cost I'd have no problem adding SMS back!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a cool idea! I'll start using Jumper.

</comment><comment><USER20> Good idea. Just got back to training and I need someone to guilt me when I've been lazy.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha this will hopefully do the trick! If it doesn't, let me know how it could be better! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Or you know, just exercise every second day?

</comment><comment><USER22> Beware of overtraining

</comment><comment><USER23> Where is the robot?

</comment><comment><USER24> Neat idea, but I'm put off by the gratuitous profanity: >>you exercised 5 of the last 7 days. Dammmnnnnnn! Keep kicking ass.

Not everything has to be edgy. Can't you simply say "Great job!" or "congrats" ?</comment>


Quantity Always Trumps Quality - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001160.html

<comment><USER2> Jeff likes to give his posts misleading titles.

Iteration (which is what he's referring to when he says "quantity") is an essential part of quality software. But "quantity over quality" suggests perpetually producing lots of crap without regard to outcomes.

Still, his call to prefer working, shipping code over paralysis-through- analysis is very good.

<comment><USER3> Actually, the preference for Iteration is really just another form of "Evolution is Smarter Than You." Or, if you will: You'll never learn as much about [X] by just thinking about it, as opposed to actually doing [X] a whole bunch! (While thinking about it.)

<comment><USER4> An interesting counterpoint (kind of anyway): [http://ravimohan.blogspot.com/2007/04/learning-from- sudoku-s...](http://ravimohan.blogspot.com/2007/04/learning-from-sudoku- solvers.html)

<comment><USER3> But that is Doing & Thinking vs. Doing & not enough thinking.

Our options are:

        1) Too much thinking, not enough doing
        2) Balanced thinking & doing
        3) Too much doing, not enough thinking

As often is the case, the middle path is best.

<comment><USER4> Yes I agree, its not a terribly interesting conclusion, but a balanced approach wins (at least for interesting problems). I guess there is often a risk that there is too much thought/talk versus action more so then the reverse (not to say that the reverse doesn't happen, it is just rarer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay._

Is it narcissism when authors believe their readers are so stupid that they'll drink everything they write ? Don't we deserve at least some sort of credible example, even if it's obviously made up and exagerated to fit the author's narrowed perception of reality ?

<comment><USER6> See, by Atwood's very sound reasoning, we'll help him improve quality by not reading his blog and by supporting somebody who's actually a writer worth reading. But his article doesn't cover the fact that hackers are subject to inertia like everybody else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This illustrates why RSS is a failure. Almost all of the people with the most subscribers are the ones who churn out mindless crap on a regular schedule. So much for the theory that RSS would give those who publish great stuff intermittently an equal shot at the limelight.

<comment><USER8> I don't see how reguarly posted crap takes anything away from occasional quality. _Of course_ the people who post regularly get the most subscribers - they produce the most stuff! But I subscribe to about 200 feeds, most (150+) of which don't publish even once a week. Without RSS I would never bother to follow them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As I've always said, the difference between the expert programmer and the novice isn't that the expert is smarter, he just did the same stupid mistakes so many times, he knows his way out.

</comment><comment><USER10> To me, this is stating the obvious.

The best way to learn is by doing, and the best way to get better is to (happily) make mistakes and learn.

Nobody/nothing is perfect, and often (perceived/contextual) perfection is derived from iteration. And the hardest part about iteration is often making the start.

</comment><comment><USER11> This only works if you learn with each iteration. At times I don't. Learning is an active process and needs time and effort dedicated to it. Otherwise you're running in place.

</comment><comment><USER12> Misleading title.

More accurate: Quantity _Causes_ Quality.

<comment><USER13> Practice does _not_ make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. If you keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again, you gain nothing.

<comment><USER14> My tae kwon do master states the same:

"Slow, well done, steady."

[as opposed to aerobics shake-it-all with music "gymnastics"]

<comment><USER15> "Do it. Do it right. Do it right now."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Few Valid Reasons to Reject a Bug Fix - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2015/06/22/valid-reasons-to-reject-bug-fix.html?2015-25 <comment><USER2> why isn't the #1 reason _to avoid introducing regressions_ , i.e. changing a behavior that (even if it runs contrary to spec or documentation) existing users/applications rely on, knowingly or unknowingly?

In such cases, fixes shouldn't be _rejected_ per se but instead be deferred until the full impact on existing code bases can be estimated. Such a fix should be deferred to the next major release AND the user base notified that the change in behavior is coming (and/ ideally, give affected users a way to check their apps for reliance on that soon-to-end behavior and/or provide a backward-compatibility switch to retain the old behavior long enough to get affected apps converted).

Few things alienate your existing user base more than having long-working applications suddenly _broken_ by "fixes" whose implications were not warned of in (at least) release notes.</comment>


Google: Structured Markup May Become a Ranking Factor - <AUTHOR> https://www.seroundtable.com/google-structured-markup-ranking-purposes-20885.html <comment><USER2> Structured data (with Schema.org and OpenGraph) is being used by AppleBot and Spotlight. Since mobile search on iOS is 75% Spotlight (and 25% everything else - including Google) you're well advised to implement it.</comment>


Magical Thinking - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking

<comment><USER3> "Magical thinking includes all systems of magic, as it includes the idea of mental causation, i.e. the possibility of the mind having an effect on the physical world directly."

We actually already do this. We all believe that our minds will have direct effects on the way we move, for example. Free will is just an instance mental causality. The problem is that while it's easy to not believe in magic, it's just so hard not to believe in free will.

</comment><comment> alan-crowe > For example, an obsessive-compulsive cleaning ritual may overemphasize the > order, direction, and number of wipes used to clean the surface. The goal > becomes less important than the actions used to achieve the goal, with the > implication that magic rituals can persist without efficacy because the > intent is lost within the act.

This made me think about the way we teach beginning programmers to comment code. In commercial practice writing comments is an economic activity. One spends time and money now, hoping to benefit a year in the future when one needs to modify the original code. Optimal commenting requires knowing your cost of capital. If you are funding your start up on your credit card at 2% per month you should write fewer comments than if you are polishing corporate code funded by a bond paying 2% per year.

There is a good reason that we overlook cost of capital when we are writing comments. A bad comment costs 5 minutes when you write it, and costs 5 more minutes a year later when you read it and find that the information that you cannot get from the code isn't in the comment either. A good comment saves you two hours on reconstructing reasoning that you have forgotten, but only cost five minutes to write because the key point was fresh in your mind from composing the code. The difference in profit between a good comment and a bad comment are so large that they overwhelm any reasonable cost of capital.

I have never seen a tutorial on writing comments that even mentions the cost of capital. So it seems to be traditional that the intent (to make money) is lost within the act.

</comment><comment><USER4> See also: Cargo Cult Programming -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming>

"Cargo cult programming is a style of computer programming that is characterized by the ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. Cargo cult programming is typically symptomatic of a programmer not understanding either a bug he or she was attempting to solve or the apparent solution..."

<comment><USER5> Interesting that you mention this. I'm almost done re-reading "The Logic of Failure" by Dietrich Dörner and have come across this gem (p170) (s/war/software engineering/, s/commander/developer/):

"The effects of "methodism" - the unthinking application of a sequence of actions we have once learned - can have a significant impact in areas other than measuring quantities of water. The motivation is the same, however: we are most inclined to deconditionalize a form of action and use it over and over again if it has proved successful for us or for others. [Karl von] Clausewitz, from whom I have borrowed the term methodism, observed:

"So long as no acceptable theory, no intelligent anaylsis of the conduct of war exists, routine methods will tend to take over even at the highlest levels...Their only insights are those that they have gained by experience. For this reason, they prefer to use the means with which their experience has equipped them, even in cases that could and shuold be handled freely and individually. They will copy their supreme comanders' favorite device - <USER2> automatically creating a new routine...War, in its highest forms, is not an infinite mass of minor events, analogous despite their diversities, which can be controlled with greater to lesser effectiveness depending on the methods applied. War consists rather of single, great, decisive actions, each of which needs to be handled individually. War is not like a field of wheat, which, without regard to the individual stalk, may be mown more of less efficiently depending on the quality of the scythe; it is like a stand of mature trees in which the ax has to be used judiciously according to the characteristics and development of each individual trunk."

...The methodist is not able to cope with specific, individual configurations on their own terms, for he has two or three ways of proceeding, and he uses one or the other depending on the general features of the situation as a whole. He does not take into account the individuality of the situation as it is evidenced in the specific configuration of its features."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "In religion, folk religion and superstition, the correlation posited is between religious ritual, such as prayer, sacrifice or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or recompense."

In Silicon Valley, the correlation posited is between investment ritual and an expected benefit or recompense.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought this was going to be another post about the bubble or Color Labs.

</comment><comment><USER8> See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology>

The fact is that only a tiny portion of the population of the world today do not espouse some form of magical or teleological thinking. It's extremely important to recognize and understand such phenomena.

</comment><comment><USER9> For whom does this article elucidate anything?</comment>


Ask HN: Best OSX Email Client for High Volume - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering if there's some email client out there that can easily handle high volumes of email.  The default Mail client can get bogged down and outlook for mac is pretty unpleasant to use.<p>What do you use? <comment><USER2> I would love to know what other people are using.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thunderbird.</comment>


Zombies - <AUTHOR> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

<comment><USER2> Having read through the first third of the paper or so, here's some thoughts.

I'm not convinced by the fact that showing 'possibility' of zombies is enough to eliminate physicalism. The argument they use is too slippery for me to grasp, but it basically sounds to me something like this:

Skeptics think that the laws of physics are sufficient to describe the universe. It suffices to show that magic is possible, and then skepticism is false. This is why opponents of skepticism do not have to point to actual cases of magic being performed; it is enough if such things are possible.

Second, along the lines of conceivable -> possible, here's an interesting thought experiment.

I can conceive of an immovable object. An object such that when it is inserted into our universe, it can never be moved with respect to some frame of reference. Such an object is much easier to conceive of than a zombie.

I can conceive of an irresistable object. This object is such that it moves with constant velocity relative to some frame of reference, and its velocity can never be changed.

I find it hard to accept that the possibility of such concepts can be used to show anything useful about the universe.

Further on, I found that the best counterexample included was that of Daniel Dennett, who compares the idea of consciousness against the idea of health - to quote the quotation:

Supposing that by an act of stipulative imagination you can remove consciousness while leaving all cognitive systems intact — a quite standard but entirely bogus feat of imagination — is like supposing that by an act of stipulative imagination, you can remove health while leaving all bodily functions and powers intact. … Health isn't that sort of thing, and neither is consciousness (1995, 325). <end quotation>

Finally, it's nice that they went out and mentioned all the issues with semantics around the concepts of 'conceivable' and 'possible', because that was the part that feels like it wants to give me a migraine.

Last thought: One of the ideas was that whatever it is that distinguishes us from zombies does not exist in a physical sense. But we have devices that can read our thoughts - or at least show that our physical state is changing while we think.

My MRI shows brain activity, therefore I am.

<comment><USER3> The alleged inference from "zombies are possible" to "physicalism is wrong" isn't quite what you say. It goes more like this. (1) If physicalism is correct, then (e.g.) mental states are _identical to_ physical brain states. (Or something along those lines.) (2) But if A is identical to B, then A = B in all possible worlds; that is, A is _necessarily_ the same as B. (3) Therefore, if physicalism is correct, then in no possible world are there zombies; necessarily, there are no zombies. (4) In other words, if it is possible that there are zombies, then physicalism is wrong.

I think this argument is rubbish. Claim 2 seems like obvious bullshit, unless "identical" is given some weird technical meaning that makes claim 1 bullshit instead. Further, with the sense of "possible" that's relevant here it's very far from clear that anyone's shown that zombies are possible. (The SEP page treats this point quite well.)

I have used the following parallels before: I can imagine electric current flowing without any charged particles being present, "therefore" electric current is not the same thing as the movement of charged particles; I can imagine my computer continuing to do what it does without its circuitry and what happens therein, "therefore" the processing my computer does is not a mere activity of its circuitry. What twaddle. (See <http://www.mccaughan.org.uk/g/log/2007/inconceivable.html> for a longer rant on the subject, complete with a couple of quotations to show that some philosophers really do think such silly things in the case of consciousness.)

<comment><USER4> (2) Is most certainly true.

If A == B, then B just is A, we're saying A == A. A possible world where B != A is a world where A != A. You seem to believe that A != B even in our world.

(1) is the essence of the physicalist claim. You can certainly declare it bullshit if you want...

The leap in in (3). While brains and mental states as we know them must be identical, according to physicalists, other worlds may do brain-like and mental-state-like things _not_ as we know them.

For instance, we may have misunderstood our own world.

Oddly, (4) gets back on track. If zombies can be proven to be possible (which conceivability does not do) then physicalism is false. (Although, this generally implies epiphenomenon, which also implies causality is false, which puts consciousness outside of logic {P -> Q} let alone physics.)

<comment><USER3> Whether 2 is true depends on how you understand "identical". For sure, if you mean something like "synonymous", then probably "identical" things are the same in all possible worlds. But if you take it broadly enough that, e.g., "consciousness is identical with something that happens in the brain" isn't false _by definition_ then I don't see how your argument works.

I only think 1 is bullshit if you use something like the "synonymous" definition. (Can we agree that it's crazy to say that physicalism requires believing that "consciousness" just _means_ some particular set of brain processes?)

I think your comment about 3 basically amounts to agreeing with me that physicalism doesn't say that mental states and brain states are "identical" in any sense that makes the rest of the zombie argument work.

I agree, of course, that if 1-3 are correct then "zombies are possible" implies "physicalism are wrong".

Epiphenomenalism doesn't imply that causality is false. And if consciousness is "outside of logic" then I say: so much the worse for the notion of consciousness. (But I don't see any reason why we should think consciousness is outside of logic, whether zombies are possible or not.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Eliezer Yudkowsky lays out the Bayesian reductionist argument in his Zombies sequence: <http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Zombies_(sequence)>

It's a good accessible read, mentions a few of the interesting questions zombies can shed light on, and has a fair number of reader comments and responses.

<comment><USER3> In particular, anyone with a passing familiarity with the issue is likely to find the movie script at <http://lesswrong.com/lw/pn/zombies_the_movie/> extremely funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem with philosophical zombies ("p-zombies") is that, since they're indistinguishable from normal humans, some of them must go around talking about qualia and consciousness and so on; it's mysterious what's causing them to do this, since they don't actually have any qualia or consciousness.

This is the strongest argument that mind is matter: mental things like qualia clearly do cause physical events (e.g. discussions about qualia), which seems to suggest that qualia etc are themselves physical, since we expect physical events to have physical causes.

(And yet I can't stop wondering how being a collection of atoms feels like anything.)

<comment><USER7> I've never understood why that's an argument, or why talking about qualia and consciousness depends on having them, any more than a program that prints "ouch" when you stop it feels real pain.

To me, there just seems to be an undecidable knot there that can never go away, even if you say it doesn't exist like Dennett and others.

Another thing that never gets said is that questions of consciouness are really questions about solipsism in disguise. The real question isn't whether what it's like to be my neighbour is different than what it's like to be someone who died 100 years ago. The only real "obvservable" difference is that it's like something else to be _me_.

<comment><USER6> "I've never understood [...] why talking about qualia and consciousness depends on having them"

It doesn't, but _someone_ has to have them in order for the concepts to get introduced in the first place.

Imagine a world that has always been populated entirely by p-zombies. By definition, that world should be indistinguishable from this world, so how on earth did they get started talking about consciousness and qualia?

In your example of the "ouch" printing program, someone had to have pain and say "ouch" before such a program was made.

<comment><USER8> _Imagine a world that has always been populated entirely by p-zombies. By definition, that world should be indistinguishable from this world, so how on earth did they get started talking about consciousness and qualia?_

The answer to the question "how did they get started talking about qualia" is: by definition, the hypothetical Z-world is indistinguishable from ours. In our world, people talk about qualia. Therefore, in the Z-world, zombies talk about qualia. What's more, the beginning of "zombies talking about qualia" would be the same as the beginning of "people talking about qualia".

I have a feeling I'm misunderstanding you.

 _In your example of the "ouch" printing program, someone had to have pain and say "ouch" before such a program was made._

Why? What if the program is the output of a random number generator? Does that mean the random number generator experiences pain?

<comment><USER9> _The answer to the question "how did they get started talking about qualia" is: by definition, the hypothetical Z-world is indistinguishable from ours. In our world, people talk about qualia. Therefore, in the Z-world, zombies talk about qualia._

Right. Which implies that the reason that we talk about qualia is not that we have them (otherwise zombies wouldn't), but for some completely different reason that just happens to exactly line up with the qualia that we in fact do have. That would be an astounding coincidence and is a major strike against the theory per Occam's Razor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've lost count of the number of times Zombies came up in our Philosophy of Mind classes. The classic question was always "if consciousness can be entirely reduced to physical phenomena, then isn't the only difference between a zombie and a person that they have different brain states (or a lack of certain ones)?"

That made people very uncomfortable about a lot of things, and really demonstrated the group feeling that consciousness has to be some other substance. A lot of great conversations about verifiability, positivism, philosophy of mind, and naturalism/materialism were started with Zombies.

<comment><USER11> I always like these kinds of debates, but they always strike me of being fundamentally futile.

The arguments always assume that we have qualia as a prerequisite and that a zombie doesn't. However, the very people who believe in qualia will themselves say that animals don't possess qualia as they're not conscious. Yet we as conscious thinking humans do. So how did we acquire this from a logical standpoint? Because surely a biologically identical zombie, built atom for atom the same way as a human would itself possess qualia. If the zombie doesn't posses qualia, how did we acquire it? I'm genetically related to a rat and at one point in history we were the same species, so how did I acquire qualia and it not?

It eventually just strikes me that it's an asinine argument, and only unthinking zombies would waste their time with it, thus we have proof of p-zombies in the form of the qualophiles and qualophobes, because no one else gave a big enough shit for long enough to think past an initial idea and the two camps have been left arguing as futilely as if they were arguing over the existence of god.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For some reason these arguments all seem to start with the assumption that _we_ are not all zombies. I have yet to see any good evidence that we aren't and it seems like the simplest explanation.</comment>


Jobs Shows Off Apple 'Spaceship' Campus - Bloomberg - daniel-cussen http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-08/steve-jobs-shows-off-spaceship-design-for-new-apple-campus.html <comment><AUTHOR> In the "Man Who Fell to the Earth", [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Fell_to_Earth_(film...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Fell_to_Earth_\(film\)) the lead character is an extra terrestrial posing as a man, made a lot of money by being a technologist selling amazing "inventions" from his planet, and has a luxury apartment which turns out to be a spaceship, which is meant to cart water back to his planet, which has run out due to its use in power generation. Maybe Jobs is planning bring natural gas back to his planet?</comment>


The Fight for the "Right to Repair" - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/fight-right-repair-180959764/?no-ist <comment><USER2> I think this whole open source and right to repair/modify will be very interesting with self-driving cars, because of their interaction with the commons. Here are some issues.

There have been some discussions about the ethics of self-driving cars if it should sacrifice the lives of the people in the cars to save more lives. In a right to repair/modify wouldn't a lot of people pay to have the algorithm changed for their car to always favor the people in the car no matter what?

If the self-driving software is completely open source, you can exploit the collision avoidance algorithms to favor aggressive driving with your car. For example if the software tries to keep a 15 foot buffer between cars, you can"tune" your software to use a shorter buffer and cut in front of traffic more easily.

Law enforcement will campaign for a remote "pull over" command to prevent people from fleeing police.

The answers to these types of questions will be very important for open source going forward.

<comment><USER3> I think the ethical question is greatly overblown. The odds of being in a situation where there's any sort of ethical choice to make are so remote as to not really be worth considering. 99.9999% of the time, the correct choice when faced with an impending crash will be to brake as hard as the driving surface allows and steer to avoid obstacles as much as possible.

In any case, tinkering and commons already intersect to an extent, for example with emissions. It's not uncommon for emissions to be favored over performance, for example, and some people hack their cars to favor performance instead. Or they just like being polluting assholes, as is the case with "rolling coal." But it's not a big deal, some jurisdictions do periodic testing and others just rely on the fact that such people are relatively rare.

<comment><USER4> > I think the ethical question is greatly overblown.

Not at all. One programmer is going to make choices that affect ~ a billion vehicles one day, so something that doesn't happen 99.9999% per hour will happen 100 times per hour. And it's going to be more mundane things, like programming the speed limit 1 mph slower results in 500 less deaths per year, or using drm/copyright to stop poor people from getting driving software, thus killing thousands of people.

<comment><USER3> "Per hour" is rather ridiculous. I'm talking about per _crash_. There are a couple million vehicle crashes in the US each year, so if it really is 99.9999%, that's two or three ethical crises per year here. Among a billion vehicles it would be maybe ten per year. And honestly I'd be surprised if it's that many. When have you _ever_ heard of a crash where there was any kind of ethical dilemma in the response? People keep imagining scenarios, but I've never heard of one happening in real life.

As for speed limits and such, I'm talking about the car's ethical choices in crashes, not the ethics of the programmers.

<comment><USER5> I'm actually familiar with a situation like this, the person was on a highway at night and came around a corner to see a deer lying in the road and a crowd right behind the deer. There was a couple of people off to either side. They couldn't brake in time to stop and not harm the people on the other side of the deer.

<comment><USER6> Are you saying the correct response is to swerve in to the group with the fewest people?

I don't think human drivers have the reaction time to make these decisions, not sure why so many expect computers to be able to.

<comment><USER7> Because eventually, computers will be able to.

<comment><USER8> But by then the car will be able to engage its flight module, take off, and fly you directly home.

<comment><USER7> Maybe. Flight generally uses quite a bit more energy.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but perhaps less than you think. I fly small aircraft, and the one we fly gets ~15 mpg in cruise carrying up to 6 people at just over 200 mph. There are cars/trucks on the road that get less than that. If I slow it down to 150 mph, I can get over 20 mpg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was a hugely frustrating thing for me recently.

I picked up a used Pioneer AVR on eBay a few years ago and had no issues with it until I decided to plug my wife's older plasma television in because my main TV decided to take up an unusual smoking habit. It refused to connect to the new TV, indicating an HDCP error, despite working when plugged directly in to any of the attached devices. A quick google search yielded the likely culprit: my firmware was out of date. This model was one version behind but, unfortunately, was one model-year behind the ones that allowed for online updates. So I called Pioneer and was told they do not provide firmware updates directly to consumers and I could only get a firmware update from an authorized repair center. Besides the added frustration of having to disconnect the 30 or so cables, cart this thing across town, then come back at a later date to pick it up and plug it all back in, the fee was going to be half of what I had paid for the thing in the first place. So DRM caused a product I'm using legally to fail and the simple software fix was not allowed to be applied by me.

After following several dead links, I managed to find a forum where someone posted a Dropbox link to the firmware, making me a firmware pirate (aaarr!). This incredibly technical process that can only be performed at an authorized service center? Extract a file to a USB key, insert said key, turn on device while holding down _two_ buttons and wait until the screen says it's done.

Pioneer's approach here succeeded in making me a "former customer" at some point in the future since the firmware update fixed my problem.

<comment><USER11> Capitalism is the art of getting as much money out of you as possible without getting a class action lawsuit.

We hope most Pioneers customers do the same as you but I bet they don't, they think a year is enough value for the product. Pioneers work is to further reduce the time their products are expected to function.

<comment><USER10> Nearly sent milk out my nose with your quote, though it got me thinking.

Planned obsolescence, as highlighted by the article, is certainly nothing new but it seems to be an ever growing trend in parts of the CE space that once valued reliability. As customers have become more used to replacing expensive gadgets (smartphones/PCs come to mind) every few years because the new ones are faster and more capable, they've begun to value reliability less. The problem is that there are large and growing segments in the space that don't warrant replacement so frequently. My AVR is seven years old, does 9.1 audio, decodes every major format[0] and supports all of the HDMI features of the television I have plugged in to it. My 1080p plasma television is among the final generation, doesn't suffer from screen burn despite being used 90% of the time for gaming, produces a better picture (color and screen consistency) than the LCD it replaced and is nearly impossible to find a "new" replacement for. It was also among the least expensive 1080p televisions available at the time it was purchased since plasma was on its way out.

Arguments that "these things are much more complex to repair these days" are no longer true with the hundreds of YouTube videos, web sites and forums dedicated to repairing products so it really does appear to be manufacturers imposing artificial constraints on product lifetime in order to encourage high repair fees or premature replacement with newer models in categories of products that don't have a natural replacement cycle beyond the failure cycle.

The ability to repair a device and its reliability is quickly becoming a _required feature_ in this home. Assuming it's a product I won't replace until it fails, this experience has caused me to research products over a certain price more thoroughly to identify those with a large community behind them, a long warranty, and a flexible repair policy.

[0] Nearly every new device I plug in causes the receiver to jump to PCM mode because the decoders are being built in to the devices. Considering the ability to decode every common audio format was a major feature I purchased it for, and a feature that would cause me to replace it, it's going to remain in my living room even longer if it doesn't fail. Unless I replace the television with something that requires an HDMI spec beyond what the device can handle (and I don't see getting a 4K TV for that room, so that's safe), grow ears that can discern a tenth channel (or the room changes in some unexpected way allowing a tenth or eleventh speaker to _fit_ somewhere), or end up buying four more devices to plug in to it, it will be replaced only when it fails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to do after-market repair medical equipment (MRI's, CT's, X-Ray, etc). One of the biggest frustrations was: $manufacturer wants $5000 to repair a CT. We'd charge $1000.

We'd repair the CT, and it would pass all the built-in diagnostic tests. But then when the customer went to make a scan, a pop-up would appear saying "Unauthorized Repair! Call $manufacturer to fix!".

$manufacturer repair tech would come in, plug in a usb-key, type a code, and charge $1000. They didn't run any of the diagnostics, and were basically paid to keep the usb-key available.

I believe in the right to repair, because preventing it just causes artificial monopolies and price-gouging.

(note: I don't remember actual prices. Numbers were just made up)

<comment><USER13> So, if you do an after-market repair on a medical device, and a patient dies as a result of poor device performance, who does the FDA usually come after, you or the device manufacturer?

I suspect the liability for medical device mess-ups is at least partially responsible for that situation. The tech who didn't run any diagnostics would be in serious shit if a patient died after he did nothing aside from typing in the error-clearing code on your repair.

In many cases, the FDA requires the device manufacturer to maintain training records and updated repair procedures for any repair shop doing repairs on their devices. This could be the source of that error message.

<comment><USER12> To be honest, I'm not sure. I was a level-of-separation away, so I never really had to worry about it personally. I'd imagine both will end up in the lawsuit, at least partially.

FWIW, we did keep updated records on all the work that was done on the machine, for this exact reason. We also had to have records of passed diagnostics.

<comment><USER14> I would also have to imagine that is is extremely difficult to fix an MRI such it produce incorrect scan results with being obviously broken.

<comment><USER12> Right. The tests they have are pretty "by the book". Readings and diagnostics have to be pretty tight.

<comment><USER12> As I can't edit the above post: Listen to wyldfire over me. My impression was that they were by the book, but I'm not an actual repair-tech

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think electronics should be designed for repair and easy recycling as a main design goal.

For example a cell phone, you could build it with an aluminum back with small phillips screws instead of glued back. Open the phone up with a standard screw driver and you will be able to replace the battery, main board and screen yourself.

What kind of environment do you want to leave for future generations. A big pile of electronic garbage or a world as clean as it could be? What about the carbon foot print of upgrade phones every two years?

If we can reuse electronics components the garbage foot print should be smaller.

Why do we have to throw a working screen and battery in a cell phone if you just want to upgrade the cpu speed or camera of your phone?

How about laws that require that consumers should be able to repair their things, average life time.

Good projects on the right path so far Google has Project Ara Fairphone2

<comment><USER16> I don't mind them gluing things like the battery in since it make for a more rigid phone provided they use a glue that a moderate amount of heat can greatly weaken.

The problem with upgrading parts of something like a phone is that the components interfaces change frequently. Even desktop cpu/memory sockets change every few years.

Compact form factors are worse as you dont have room for the connector, and for the larger components they are like the engine in a F1 car, a important structural piece.

I do like the concept of Ara, but I don't think it will be practical anytime soon.

<comment><USER17> > Even desktop cpu/memory sockets change every few years.

Amusingly, AMD seems to manage fine without nearly as many socket changes as Intel...

<comment><USER18> It may be stretching things to say that AMD is managing fine.

<comment><USER19> But it's pretty clear their problems are not at all caused by them not retooling the CPU sockets often enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As someone who came of tinkering age in the early 70s and spend lots of time taking apart and repairing old machines, I wish to express another concern. How do we expect to hook the next generation of engineers if there is no opportunity to tinker as a child? For me that spark (excuse the pun) definitely came from those early "break it/fix it" sessions. Is tinkering going to be relegated to playing with the public APIs of our devices? I assume that most devices don't have public APIs - you need to get a dev license and sign an NDA. What ten year old is going to do that? Will only the children of engineers at major tech companies be able to tinker? I see bad unintended long term consequences for our society.

<comment><USER21> This is a very important point. Children can't learn from magical slabs that can't be opened.

That said, my personal view is that _you should never buy toys_. You should build them. There are two important reasons for this: first, as you say kids need to learn how to disassemble and reassemble things. Home-made toys are going to fit that bill nicely. Second, kids need to not learn consumerist habits at a young age. Toys are easy (and fun) to make at home, and, like food, much better (and better for you).

As for computers, I'm not excited about my kids even seeing a screen, which obviates the problem of disassembling a magical, sealed slab in the first place. When they are old enough (10+) perhaps I'll let them play with discrete electronics on a breadboard. :)

<comment><USER20> Yes to building and breadboarding. At least discrete components will never have proprietary APIs ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> John Deere is attempting to make sales of their tractors 'leases' to enforce their ban on self repair:

[http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john- deere/](http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/)

<comment><USER23> I am super hardcore stallman-esque pro openness, but I also have somewhat libertarian views on how people should be allowed to operate.

My thinking is: let them lock them down and after a few years, someone who genuinely values openness will come in as a competitor. If you pass a law requiring some kind of openness, companies against openness will just hang out at the edge of what is legally permissible.

I am curious what the HN crowd thinks of this, if a legislative solution could be desirable, and why.

<comment><USER24> The problem is already a legislative one. Copyright law is being abused to deny ownership of physical objects. The problem is already directly caused by law.

<comment><USER23> This is a good point. I am generally anti-copyright but that view is somewhat recent and I still sometimes have an internalized belief that copyright is natural. However we invented copyright and I do think we should either go to something like 5 year terms or eliminate it completely.

I completely forgot that without copyright, this issue would be dramatically different. They could still use obscurity to a point, but we would have the legal right to discover what they are doing and reproduce it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For me, Apple devices are always what come to mind when thinking about ability to repair and modify. I used to not mind when I couldn't open my iPod Classic to replace the battery, because failures like this rarely occurred and when they did Apple repaired them easily. Today however, when something as trivial as a computer memory upgrade is restricted, and the Genius Bar is overloaded with iPhone screen repairs, I find myself wanting some sort of standards with regards to repair rights.

<comment><USER3> You can replace your battery, it just takes a bit of time and effort. Ditto the screen. RAM is tough because it's soldered in, but at least they have a good excuse for making the batteries and RAM that way: they want to make their stuff smaller.

Right to Repair did show up pretty loudly with Apple devices when the Error 53 controversy happened, where people's phones would refuse to boot after having the home button replaced. Thankfully, it appears this was an honest mistake and it has been fixed. It does show how losing the Right to Repair would _actually_ look, though: not just stuff that's hard to replace because of design constraints, but devices which arbitrarily refuse to accept unauthorized replacement parts.

<comment><USER26> iPhones are reasonably easy to repair some of the major components still, but Apple laptops have been getting worse in that regard, with batteries glued in and unserviceable, etc.

<comment><USER27> Right or wrong, if consumers have the choice between a thinner, lighter laptop with better battery life and a more clunky laptop that is easier to repair, most appear to be choosing the former over the latter.

<comment><USER28> The two are not mutually exclusive. I don't think gluing everything together is purely engineering decision.

<comment><USER29> Glue allows them to attach battery to the body. Macbook's battery is not single piece, rather is few batteries connected with each other shaped in a ways that allow them to fill all empty space within the body.

<comment><USER26> Some other current models achieve this in a different manner, with a molded cage that holds the individual batteries in place throughout the body but can be removed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Honestly, most products are becoming so integrated, and so delicate, that "repair" means "replace the one expensive bit."

Couple that with every lighter, ever thinner, ever flimsier, glue based laminated construction, needed to hit market size and weight requirements, and you get absolutely no economic sense in designing for, or supporting, repair.

In a sense, it's our growing skill at mass fabrication, and the growing cost of skilled human knowledge workers, that is driving this "not economically repairable" phenomenon.

Do we really want heavier, clunkier, more expensive things, that can be repaired? The planet may approve, but the Wall Mart shopper sure doesn't!

<comment><USER31> Wall Mart shoppers are reactive, they buy what they're told to buy.

The funny thing about mass fabrication is, that it can make pretty much anything equally well. It's disconnected from the actual "meaning" of the product being manufactured. So if someone were to design a phone that's fully user-serviceable, with all components replaceable and swappable for third- party products, Chinese factories would not care. They'd make it just as easily as they make iPhones now.

I'm pretty sure people would buy such a phone if a big enough company decided to do that and put their marketing department to work. General population buys what it is told to buy.

<comment><USER32> [https://atap.google.com/ara/](https://atap.google.com/ara/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> No need for a "Right" to repair. What is needed is abolishment of intellectual property laws which allow companies to claim what you think is your legitimately purchased property. The core problem with intellectual property is that it trumps physical property.

Companies shouldn't be forced by government to make repairable devices. A better way would be some sort of "Repair Coalition" of consumers and companies which agree to boycott unrepairable products and respectively produce repairable products with instructions.

<comment><USER34> > it trumps physical property

That's the point of invented rights in a nutshell, to weaken the real actual rights, while bribing people into the illusion that they are better off that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> If substantial numbers of consumers are demanding fixable/open electronics, a manufacturer could comply and fill a great need! My guess is that market is v small. Regulation is unneccessary here.

<comment><USER36> If the market has failed to protect a right that is important, that's exactly when regulation is necessary.

Handling the constant failures and disasters created by the market to the detriment of the populace is the purpose of regulations and the entire justification of the mixed economy model every modern society operates under.

<comment><USER37> What right has not been protected?

You do not have a right to require manufacturers to create repairable items. If you think such a right exists, prove it.

That's what this "right" to repair really is -- it is forcing manufacturers to make things that they don't currently make, and that most people don't want to buy. (If people wanted to buy them, someone would already be selling them and making money on that segment of the market.)

In effect, this would be the government taking action to promote the personal preferences of a small number of consumers. (If the number of consumers who wanted repairable products was not small, manufacturers would already be making such products by choice, and government action would not be necessary.)

When the government starts forcing manufacturers to make things that people don't want to buy, something has gone pretty wrong.

<comment><USER38> >What right has not been protected?

The right to complete ownership of an item you paid full price on. More and more manufacturers want to erode this right and make it "illegal" for people to repair products they paid for. Did you not read the article?

<comment><USER37> Ownership is not all-encompassing. For example, it would be illegal for me to make and sell copies of the books I own. It would also be illegal for me to drive over the speed limit in the car I own. If I owned a gun, I couldn't just shoot anyone I wanted.

What makes you certain that the right to repair something is a built-in feature of ownership, when ownership clearly does not confer all possible rights?

Ownership is clearly not what you think it is.

<comment><USER38> So first, you produce an example that literally has nothing to do with repair. Then your point about the gun is even more absurd. Depriving somebody else of their right to life has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about here. Sorry, you will have to excuse me as I have better things to do and do not wish to engage you further.

<comment><USER37> You are very good at missing the point.

Those examples demonstrate that ownership does not automatically give one the right to do whatever they want with the things they own. Therefore, one cannot assume that any right, including one to repair the things you own, is in the category of rights automatically granted by ownership. After all, not even making copies is in that category. Why would repair be?

<comment><USER36> Shooting someone is not "doing whatever you want with the things you own". Neither is copying a book. Both require that you commit an unrelated crime -- one by creating an entirely new object which violates the law, the other by committing assault with this object as you could with any other.

<comment><USER39> Isn't that the parent's point? If copying a book you own can be a crime, so can repairing an item you own. Both restrictions are equally arbitrary. While only one of those may be illegal today, there is no reason they couldn't both be illegal tomorrow. There is nothing inherit to ownership that prevents the latter from becoming a crime at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think that measures like planned obsolescence and preventing consumers from repairing the devices that they own should not be legal. They should be treated similarly to anti-competitive practices.

<comment><USER41> I'm wary of making things illegal, but I do think requiring full disclosure is in order so buyers can make up their own mind and suppliers willing to offer more reliable/repairable products can use it as a competitive advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I once had to fix a fairly complex piece of electronics and when I asked the company for a repair, they told me the directions over the phone. Unscrew this, take that out, check this, boom.

I was more than impressed by their confidence in their hardware.

<comment><USER43> Please tell us the name of the company, so that we can give them our business if we need the type of products they sell.

<comment><USER31> I second this request. I think it's important to reward companies doing things good, not just punishing companies doing things bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't really understand this fight. Why not let the market sort it out? I for one stopped buying Macbooks as soon as they were being glued shut. My 2011 MBP can be opened, I put 16 GB of RAM in there and a TB SSD. I know Apple thinks it is ridiculous [0] to use a 5 yr old PC but the thing is blazing fast. I'll never buy a laptop that is unusable in 5 years time when there are also models with up to 3 m.2 slots available at only a slightly increased size. Vote with your wallets people, that is the only way to do fair fighting in this case!

[0] [http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2016/03/21/apple- hypocritical-...](http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2016/03/21/apple-hypocritical- insensitive-pc-users-old-pc/#gref)

<comment><USER45> Because not everyone is perfectly informed about the consequences of their purchase at the time they make the purchase. I'm glad you do your research, but with this kind of law, you wouldn't _need_ to do that research and could instead spend your time doing something you enjoy. Similarly, you don't need to research your grocery store's meat selling policies to ensure you're not getting rotten meat.

<comment><USER46> _" Similarly, you don't need to research your grocery store's meat selling policies to ensure you're not getting rotten meat."_

That is a poor analogy. There actually is a lot of research needed in order to get right the edible food, including meat. We just did it in time, collectively, over many generations; then each of us just learned it all from others (parents, mostly). That's how we come to figure out that that piece of meat is not safe to eat if it smells bad and a lot of other important cues. And despite all that, dilettante individual observation can give us only so many results, and that's why there actually was necessary additional professional research that in time got institutionalized and the selling policies - rigorously regulated.

<comment><USER45> What? I meant as individual consumers. There's a whole lot more to food safety than whether it smells OK. We have regulations so end consumers don't have to study the history of every company involved in the retail chain or risk illness. Similarly, we can have regulations to prevent customers from unknowingly buying artificially unrepairable objects.

<comment><USER46> As I said, as individual consumers we had a lot to learn about what is safe to eat. It just happened as we grew up. We learned that knowledge from others instead of tasting everything and see what happens. The food culture however, was developed before us and now it's mature enough to be, more or less, taken for granted. This can not be said to be similar to other areas like that of digital gadgets, developed only recently and for which the community lacks common knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The French have an approach to this problem as well "forcing manufacturers to tell consumers how long their appliances will last. French companies will also have to inform consumers how long spare parts for the product will be available"[1].

IMHO, because it would only apply to French manufacturers, it will drive any manufacturing outside of France. Similar to the 35 hour work week: interesting principle, bad outcome.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2015/mar/03...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2015/mar/03/has- planned-obsolesence-had-its-day-design)

<comment><USER31> This is a great place for EU to shine. You can move your manufacturing out of an European country, but you can't really ignore whole EU as a market.

It's probably why we're successfully "getting away" with things like mandatory 2-year guarantees and ability to return faulty products bought remotely (on- line, phone, door-to-door, etc.) for 14 days, no questions asked.

[http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...](http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees- returns/faq/index_en.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Did you know that in Victoria, Australia it's illegal for you to change your own light bulbs unless you're a registered electrician? Not kidding. When I moved there I went to the local supermarket and then electronics shop to buy a replacement phone wall jack and they looked at me funny and both asked 'you're not going to install that yourself are you?'. It's insane!

I can remember my mum changing bloody power outlets in our house in New Zealand when I was young, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to turn off the breaker for that circuit then screw three cables into an outlet faceplate. Only thing some people don't know is that it's a good idea to make the earth wire a little longer if it's not already so it's the last to disengage if ripped out / whatever.

<comment><USER49> Another Victorian here. The light bulb thing isn't actually true. The legislation and exceptions are a little more convoluted than other states, but you're ok to swap out your own bulbs.

[http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27947](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27947)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Right to repair = ban on any waiver of repair rights in any commercial relationship.

<comment><USER51> That's fine, and not in conflict. Repair information just needs to be available to prevent them from continuing to be in power over your devices at their end of your business relationship. How hard did we have to fight for unlocking 2 year old phones? That was just them trying to be in power, not protect revenue or IP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> While I hate companies suing people for repairing their own properties, "right" has been overused so many places. What a sensational word! I have the "right" to not being sued! What?

I would advocate companies certify other entities as repairing authorities or just do a good job themselves; providing the support. Of course it will reduce their product sale and that would be a huge deal to us consumers as well because we want them to do well and providing better product next round.

However, it is dangerous that we use sale as THE primary measure. I believe companies should take pride in the quality of their products and services. They should inspire customer loyalty, not unethical growth to please Wall Street.

<comment><USER53> > While I hate companies suing people for repairing their own properties, > "right" has been overused so many places.

I don't think it is outrageous to claim ownership to something that I bought. If a company does not want me to repair my own property, put a big "not for sale, only for lease" label on the package.

<comment><USER52> How's it resemble "for lease"? They didn't sue people for repairing, they sued for illegally obtaining their internal documentation.

We are talking about our "right" to force other to do something rather than protecting ourselves from being forced.

It should be business issue, not an actual human right issue.

<comment><USER54> All business issues are issues of property and contract rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I can't believe we're having this discussion over 40 years after the passage of Magnuson-Moss, which covered similar ground. (Okay maybe a stretch, but thematically similar.)

If we go down this road, you'll be at the behest of all manufacturers. It's injurious to the consumer and environment alike, assuming more people will simply dispose of items rather than repairing them.

Of course it could give rise to disrupters who don't use these practices and win market share over the entrenched interests.

To me the key thing is this: if we lose the right to repair virtually all manufacturers will include some IP that precludes independent repair. The first battleground would be auto makers. Prepare to pay a lot more.

</comment><comment><USER56> The real problem is that to the average consumer, an electronic device is nothing more than a black box. There is zero chance of them ever being able to repair it, so they have no interest in whether or not it is repairable... Until the battery fails just after the warranty period is up.

I wish people would vote with their feet, but maybe there needs to be some kind of regulation since companies can't be trusted to play nice.

</comment><comment><USER57> It would be nice to even actually own some of what you're repairing. Can you resell your itunes purchases? I guess that battle is assumed lost, so we can beg for the right to repair that which we use to consume what media we do not own and can't resell.

</comment><comment><USER58> we shall, as a society, realise that software is some cross between literacy and legislation and that the right to read (and write back) software that affects us is fundamental to the good operation of society, and we will advance together.

Or we won't and we will end up like North Korea, pretending reality is somewhere it's not.

Nature is not going to care if we don't board the clue train.

</comment><comment><USER59> Imagine if when you opened your Mac ][ it disabled itself from booting again. As a "protective measure".

</comment><comment><USER60> A lot of issues surrounding the move to make anything and everything a "Service" are starting to become very clear. The issues with IoT devices being bricked, Tesla 'ownership', and so on really do need scrutiny from a functional body with a hint of the public's interest at heart.

<comment><USER37> > The issues with IoT devices being bricked, Tesla 'ownership', and so on > really do need scrutiny from a functional body with a hint of the public's > interest at heart.

Oh great, another bureaucracy.

Why should manufacturers be forced to make their products repairable by users? Why don't they have the right to make a non-repairable product, and let the market decide whether or not it succeeds? If people really want repairable products, some company will be able to make money by selling them. The market is an excellent way to track consumer preferences -- far better than a bureaucracy telling companies how to make their products.

<comment><USER61> Okay, but to be consistent you have to argue for getting rid of copyrights and patents as well. It makes no sense to regard these devices as "creative works", yet then deny that the end user has been sold an instance of this abstract structure.

<comment><USER37> How _exactly_ did you derive this from my argument? I see no logical connection.

<comment><USER62> Patent and copyright are an external force created by a bureaucracy that prevents a free market for these products.

<comment><USER37> It is certainly not a logical conclusion of my argument that all bureaucracies that interfere with the market ought to be abolished, or that the market should be free in all cases. My point was that in _this particular case_ , the market would be a better way to solve the problem than a bureaucracy.

Therefore, advocating the existence of some bureaucracies and not others does not contradict my argument, nor is it inconsistent with my argument.

<comment><USER61> In general, while market dynamics are quite important, "the market" doesn't actually constitute a valid argument for anything (as said thing would happen anyway), and usually indicates an attempt to stubbornly _ignore_ differing opinions.

The point is that companies are _already asking for state intervention_ to protect their products as being a creative endeavor. So this is no longer some noble two-party private transaction. (Which I would be all in favor for, but we're just not in that realm!)

Demanding the protections of their creative work while shirking the responsibilities (an end-user accessing and modifying the whole creative work that they've purchased) may not be definitively inconsistent, but it's extremely one-sided.

<comment><USER37> Of course market dynamics are a valid argument! They matter very much, because changes in the market affect peoples' quality of life. Policies that distort the market in a way that adversely affects peoples' quality of life should not be implemented without very good reasons. Even policies that are not expected to introduce such distortions often do, so it's good to be cautious about any proposals which could have unintended economic consequences.

Copyright and patent protection are not one-sided. Consumers benefit from them, because copyrights and patents incentivize the creation of things which would not have been created otherwise.

Many lifesaving medicines never would have been invented if pharmaceutical companies would not have been able to protect them via patents and get rich. Similarly, much of the music, movies, books, etc. that consumers enjoy never would have been created if their authors and publishers were not able to protect them via copyright, and thereby get rich.

A lot of medical, technological, and cultural progress has been made by people trying to get rich. Patents and copyrights are ingenious because they channel peoples' desire to get rich into outcomes that are overall beneficial to society. The benefits compensate for the market restrictions they accompany, and overall, patents and copyrights have made society better off than it would have been otherwise.

Finally, what responsibilities do you think companies shirking? A responsibility to make products repairable by the consumers?

No such responsibility exists. Nor do you have the right to demand that a company design its products to include a feature you like, such as repairability. If you think such responsibilities or rights exist, prove it.

If you think they don't exist, but should be created, prove that the benefit they will bring to society will compensate for the market distortions they will produce (which will be quite significant if you think through all of the extra development, support, and liability costs that manufacturers will have to endure).

<comment><USER61> You're simultaneously wed to copyright because it's here, and arguing against a "right" to repair because it is not. So you're just repeating rationalizations for the current status quo.

For the third time now - copyright and patents presume to create a type of _creative product_ wherein it is not the manufacture of the product that is really being sold to the consumer, but the _design_ of it. A person buys a cell phone not for the plastic and doped silicon it is made of, but ostensibly for the abstract structure of the way that they are arranged.

Since the person is buying an instance of a design, it stands to reason that they should have the ability to service the physical manifestation and otherwise directly interact with that design.

It's not surprising that companies want to have their cake and eat it too - implementing only the half of an abstraction that takes away a consumer's rights while ignoring the second half and leaving them subject to law-of-the- jungle. They successfully wrote law like this for scratched cds, binary software, and DRM. But that hardly implies that their land grab is in the public's interest, appeals to "trickle-down" benefits notwithstanding.

<comment><USER37> > You're simultaneously wed to copyright because it's here, and arguing > against a "right" to repair because it is not. So you're just repeating > rationalizations for the current status quo.

Oh, so you're a mind reader who can figure out my motivations? By the way, those are arguments, not rationalizations. They are pretty good, too.

> For the third time now - copyright and patents presume to create a type of > creative product wherein it is not the manufacture of the product that is > really being sold to the consumer, but the design of it. A person buys a > cell phone not for the plastic and doped silicon it is made of, but > ostensibly for the abstract structure of the way that they are arranged.

So what? Nothing in this logically necessitates any conclusions about repairability of products.

> Since the person is buying an instance of a design, it stands to reason that > they should have the ability to service the physical manifestation and > otherwise directly interact with that design.

How exactly does your previous statement logically necessitate this? Show your work. Otherwise, it is a handwavy "stands to reason," "it's just obvious" kind of assertion.

> It's not surprising that companies want to have their cake and eat it too - > implementing only the half of an abstraction that takes away a consumer's > rights while ignoring the second half and leaving them subject to law-of- > the-jungle.

What rights are being taken away? In your first sentence, you argued that a right to repair is not "here." How then can it then be violated or taken away by companies? How can anyone violate a non-existent right?

<comment><USER61> It doesn't take an ability to read minds to characterize a comment. In a universe with no copyright, arguments about its benefits would fall flat. In a universe with a right to repair, all the consumer benefits would be "manifestly true" in the way you're treating the arguments for copyright. You're demanding a level of proof that can only be met by having the condition already existing, and thus just defending the status quo.

> _show your work_

So you've expressed _your_ arguments in terms of ZFC or whatever? Coming up with new concepts is obviously intuitive work - I've laid out what I see as a simple deeper abstraction behind copyright, which you've done nothing but ignore along with every other argument.

> _What rights are being taken away?_

Rather than get into semantics over the word "right", let's say lawful ability. In the case of a CD, what has been taken away is your ability to simply make copies of that CD. Instead, the publisher purports to sell you a license to only listen to the music. Yet they conveniently forget the second half of that abstraction - if the CD is scratched, they don't send you a new one!

<comment><USER37> > In a universe with no copyright, arguments about its benefits would fall > flat.

They must not have, because we once lived in a universe without it, and now we don't. How do you suppose that happened?

Similarly, when the US patent system was created, arguments very similar to mine were presented in its defense, even though patents did not already exist. They worked. The arguments in favor of the status quo predate the status quo, and were convincing in a world without the status quo. That's because they are good arguments.

> Coming up with new concepts is obviously intuitive work - I've laid out what > I see as a simple deeper abstraction behind copyright, which you've done > nothing but ignore along with every other argument.

Intuition is not a valid or convincing argument. It does not deserve to be considered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Well, this is common sense. Remember the "Ecce homo" painting? there are some things that will likely go wrong if you do them by yourself. Sometimes with consequences that are not desirable for "the common good".

This includes repairing devices that are required to be reliable for public safety.

</comment><comment><USER64> iFixit ([https://www.ifixit.com](https://www.ifixit.com)) is pretty great for Mac products.

<comment><USER65> [https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup](https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup) is better

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> If you can't open it, you don't own it.

</comment><comment><USER67> Can I have the right to repair iOS?

</comment><comment><USER68> .... "but its for our safety"

</comment><comment><USER69> This is carburetor nostalgia, from a time when everything was human scale and adjustable. Look at how chips are stacked and interconnected within packages in modern design[1], that trend will only intensify. Software is also getting more complex, with deep learning the system develops its own if/thens.

[1] [http://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/news/070905_p10_hynix.jpg](http://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/news/070905_p10_hynix.jpg)

<comment><USER70> How do they make that?! Don't the interconnects short?

<comment><USER69> Using a modern wire bonding machine</comment></comment></comment>


Found a Nice Flutter Open-Source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ionicfirebaseapp/getflutter <comment><USER2> The interesting thing is it comes from an Ionic shop.

Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054653](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054653)</comment>