Albert Hofmann discovers the effects of LSD (1943) - <AUTHOR> http://laphamsquarterly.org/intoxication/exploring-alternate-universe <comment><USER2> Being in the throws of a rather intense hallucinogenic event can create significant stress and disorientation. A contemporary user can certainly combat these feelings by the comforting information that LSD is a widely used, and well studied chemical, and the effects are non-lethal and presenting in their proper manifestations.

For Hofman, this was not the case. It must have been extremely concerning to be without this information. The complete alteration of the perception of all of his senses, no information about the duration or magnitude of the event, and unsure if he had been fatally poisoned.

Given his initial experience, it is amazing that he persisted the way he did.

<comment><USER3> LSD amplifies beliefs and makes the user highly receptive to external ideas. Before the concept of a "bad trip" and the idea that LSD is "dangerous" became common, very negative experiences on LSD were anecdotally not frequent. In fact, most people do not have a bad first trip for similar reasons, as they don't know what to expect and aren't familiar with the sensations, and thus do not try to control them, getting into a pilot induced oscillation, further amplified by the fear of going into the dreaded bad trip that they've heard so much about. I suspect that Hofmann's experience was not so bad.

<comment><USER2> Hofman describes his furniture as contorting into "grotesque" and terrifying shapes. He mourns his family and the loss of his research lab as he believes he is dying. He himself explains at length the curious and terrifying situation.

Further, there was nothing to prepare him for this. Heroin, largely demonized by society and a quite potent drug has a "standard" dose of about .1g or 100mg. Obviously, a dose differs based on habit and potency, however this is certainly enough to feel the effects. Hofman consumed 1/4 of a mg. A dose 400x smaller than that which was just described. With little known about hallucinogens (certainly native Americans and Amazonians had discovered psychoactive plants) at least to Hofman, this feelig was wholly original. It would be entirely possible, probably plausible given his disposition, that he was lethally poisoned.

Hofman, did say that as he descended down the bell curve after the peak that it was an enjoyable experience. He even remarked that psychologists would line to study it. However, given how intense and terrifying he deacribed the initial onset, I would not fault him, not call him cowardly, for not wanting to resume self-experimentation. This likely would have lead to LSD-25 not being put into widespread circulation, possibly forever.

To your point of the self-perpetuating bad trip. I concede that it is entirely possible that the meme of a bad trip and the medias portrayal of the drug could certainly induce one to have a bad trip. However, the knowledge of how the drug interacts with the body and the now well-known pharmacology can be leveraged for confort when one is under the influence. The knowledge that one is safe and it is only a temporary state brought about by a drug. Hofman did not have this. He could not take comfort in knowing approcimately when the effects would subside, or even of they ever would. i don't think comparing a trip where a person jas knowledge of the drug academically, but never practically (a contemporary persons first trip) can be legitimately compared to the first ever trip.

It goes to show how amazing and extraordinary the feelings and perception must have been when Hofman became comfortable. After the fear and heavy effects wore off, he must have truly marveled at the changed perspective, and been willing to try amd acheive it again for its benefits accross a host of disciplines and use cases

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read _LSD: My Problem Child_. Interesting, short, book. At one point, Sandoz was giving out samples to anyone who asked, as they were hoping someone would find a good commercial use. Timothy Leary went and ordered 10 grams (which is 100,000 x 100ug doses), but apparently Princeton(?) didn't back him up or there was some importing issue, and by that time Sandoz started getting suspicious and stopped sending out samples. Oops.

It's probably due to the reckless behaviour of early users that LSD got such a bad rap and banned so hard. Not that they should have had to been responsible -- they shouldn't be blamed for stupid government actions -- it's just an unfortunate thing. And early proponents weren't very rigorous and came up with fantastical claims, greatly exaggerating LSD's capabilities. It's still great stuff, just not quite a magical cure-all. Also I'm guessing most ethics systems would have issues with dosing people without their knowledge/consent.

The book also talks of later trips to Mexico where they did mescaline I believe. And how the images they saw, the shapes and patterns, looked exactly like Aztec art.

<comment><USER5> > It's probably due to the reckless behaviour of early users that LSD got such > a bad rap and banned so hard. Not that they should have had to been > responsible -- they shouldn't be blamed for stupid government actions -- > it's just an unfortunate thing. And early proponents weren't very rigorous > and came up with fantastical claims, greatly exaggerating LSD's > capabilities.

This had very little to do with reckless behaviour of early users. I think it's generally well known at this point - that the "war-on-drugs" had primarily political purposes, especially suppressing the counter-culture.

More generally it's a war of ideas; the idea that there was a reality or conception of the world outside of say contemporary Christianity and material consumer society - were highly threatening at the time (to the nation's well- being if you will); and they remain so today (and this has much less to do with LSD and psychedelics and much more with preserving a power-structure).

And I don't think a few studies of scientific merit would have helped. Just look at how it went down with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation. [...] I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be." — _Albert Hoffman on his 100th birthday._

</comment><comment><USER7> Hofmann's views on LSD[1] in 1976 interview.

[https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/hofmann_albert/hof...](https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/hofmann_albert/hofmann_albert_interview1.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to try LSD but I have no idea where to find it. I am not too concerned with the illegality of it - but I'd like to make sure that I am not about to ingest some questionable drug that resembles LSD but isn't.

<comment><USER9> Media would have me believe that it can be abundant in some places. Never for me where I live though.

I must say that in my case I didn't find LSD, it found me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you keep a certain type of company you will increase your chances of running into a good connect for LSD.

So from that perspective, I believe LSD finds many of its users in a very organic way. Call them hipsters, outsiders, whatever, they are people who believe in a moral code but not necessarily the code of laws presented by their government. People with these views tend to congregate together so sooner or later you find someone who has grown pot, mushrooms or even knows how to get LSD.

But it's important to point out that this is not always the case. I've also seen teenagers treat DMT like it was a friday night beer, and young people using LSD to be more like a fictional character portrayed by Johnny Depp and Bill Murray.

Those types definitely chase the substance, they're lucky to get it, and they're even more lucky to keep it or stay out of jail with it.

I was not talking about them, the ones I'm thinking about are the ones who don't chase the substance, but get it anyway. The substance appears to find them.

And there's little point in trying to be someone you're not only to fit in with a group you believe would fit that first description. Then you're just one of the many people chasing a substance that does not want to be found.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're looking for more information on LSD, may I recommend _Mystic Chemist: The Life of Albert Hofmann and His Discovery of LSD_

It's a biography of Albert Hoffman but also tells the history of LSD very thoroughly as well as it's possible uses, a description of all the effects etc.</comment>


Congrats, you have an all male panel - <AUTHOR> http://allmalepanels.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> And the point of this being ...?

<comment><USER3> It appears to be an expression of ennui and sarcasm.

It fits in the general category which includes [http://yoisthisracist.com/](http://yoisthisracist.com/) .

<comment><USER2> Too much time on their hands, and not enough REAL problems to keep them occupied.

<comment><USER3> Just like most of the commenters on HN ... and the majority of the internet, for that matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


US is an oligarchy, not a democracy (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 <comment><USER2> > The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious > 'electoral' 'democratic' countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are > now.

These people never went to Russia.

<comment><USER3> I'm a Russian citizen. I can tell you firsthand that the US is as bad as Russia, with one exception: Russia is honest about what it is, while the US plays democracy games and pretends to be a "free" country.

Edit: The downvotes are a sign that I've stepped on your sore toe. Go ahead, I have karma to spare, but remember my words next time you vote in an imaginary election.

<comment><USER4> Dude, I mean... come on. After DJT was elected, you can call US elections whatever you want, but not imaginary. This shit is 100% real.

<comment><USER5> "real" is an interesting notion. when you're presented with two thoroughly awful options, and when the ability to select between the two said options is contingent on dodgy information, murky details and unanswered questions, is it really a proper choice? i almost feel like it's making important life decisions while one beer away from a blackout.

<comment><USER6> Wasn't some of the "dodgy" information allegedly supplied by Russian backed accounts on Facebook and other platforms.

Maybe instead of making the decisions one beer away from a blackout we should do what the Persians did.

"If an important decision is to be made, they [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk." ― Herodotus

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want a real working democracy, look at Switzerland. Or maybe at very local, neighborhood level in the US here and there, at the scale where people _actually care and know_.

To note: the entire Switzerland's population is 8.5M, about the size of 5 boroughs of New York City. They have _twenty six_ cantons, all with severely different policies, and 2222 municipalities. Of course most voting occurs at municipal level, then cantonal level.

To my mind, nowhere in the world any larger state managed to get to the "level of democracy" which is possible and has been demonstrably achieved at smaller scales.

What additionally exacerbates the situation in the US is the two-party system that effectively polarizes people instead of nudging them to look for compromises.

The electoral college made sense in 1770s, with a much smaller population, and very slow communication. By now, it results in interesting side effects that probably could be avoided using different mechanisms. Still I think that no large nation has deployed any such mechanisms to successfully achieve "real democracy" and not some form of oligarchy. Mass media is a major factor in that; national scale being hard to comprehend and relate to for a voter is another.

<comment><USER8> I think this outlines the core issues more than most of the responses thus far.

Our system of governance hasn't scaled as effectively in distributing democratic decision making as many may wish, and the interconnectivity we're developing is making it more pronounced.

<comment><USER9> Your concision is inspirational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups > representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US > government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups > have little or no independent influence.

I bet most people's token solution to this will be to expand the size of the administrative state with new the levels "oversight", or new laws, new agencies, etc... which will proceed to be shaped and molded by these very same forces and only solidify these "elites" & special interest group's market positions and political influence over the regular person.

No one ever wants to reduce these group's power to influence their own position in the economy and policy by limiting government. Nor does anyone ever correlate the explosion in size of the administrative state in _every_ western country since WW2 with the growth in power of the top end of the market and in general inequality (in both wealth/power). If this growth in scale has done little to help the average "little guy", who is it helping?

<comment><USER11> You obviously have an agenda in your comment. Do you have any evidence that suggests the expansion of government correlates strongly to income inequality? Scandinavian countries are a great example of countries with large government and low inequality.

<comment><USER10> People always pretend the US government size is small and tiny countries in Scandinavia have giant ones. Yet few countries have the massive number of agencies and law the US does. The size of population certainly plays a role in this but ultimately it affects the average person operating in such a society.

I'm not talking about taxation. I'm talking about the size of the administrative state, ie. the amount of intervention the government engages in in the economy and socially.

<comment><USER12> The size of the administrative state may not be a relevant metric in evaluating the extent of actions taken to equalize voice in decision making/policy based on economic power, or to limit economic inequality more generally. (In fact, one view of the large administrative state is that it's a moat designed precisely to the advantage of established actors.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I continue to believe that proportional representation could really improve things. The two basic architectures of PR are multi-winner districts (incl. STV) and mixed-member systems, either of which could be implemented easily in the US. One major advantage is that the House hasn't been expanded in a long time and the citizen:legislator ratio in the US is much worse than in most European countries. That means PR could be implemented by _only_ adding seats, so that nobody loses their Congressman.

The reason I support PR is that political parties are living entities that don't exist in a vacuum. It's basically impossible for small parties to grow on a national scale in the current environment. Previously when new parties formed and grew, they did so regionally, because US politics was much more local. But after the 17th Amendment and Medicaid, the states have much less power, and state politics is no longer an avenue to power on a national scale. It's like local stores competing with Wal-mart at this point: HQ will allocate extra resources to crush competition and then pull back afterwards. PR breaks that dynamic by giving small parties a voice in the national legislature. It forces the big guys to compete.

The way I think about it is: political parties exist in a jungle, and we just need to make sure some light reaches the forest floor.

</comment><comment><USER14> US never had a democracy. Two parties assembly rather the bad cop / good cop scenario than a true democracy where people have control, built bottom up.

However this illusion worked well up until now when oligarchies started to rise by simply putting a mirror on the front of that so called democracy.

These new regimes have an easy job since the old system bleeds from all parts.

I'm a big fan of democracy and oligarchies are the way back, not the way forward.

However I'm skeptic if humanity is capable to invent a forward looking new system in the next years.

</comment><comment><USER15> See also: 'The Quiet Coup' [0], Simon Johnson, 2009.

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the- qui...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet- coup/307364/)

EDIT: Fixed link per comment

<comment><USER16> Corrected link (save you a google search): [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the- qui...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet- coup/307364/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What I also find interesting, is that this research has been picked up by a couple major UK outlets, some other foreign outlets, but got very little coverage in US, despite it being an US issue.

<comment><USER18> Because it's not true

<comment><USER19> Bush, Obama, Trump. These are not religious figures. Past POTUS were public servants and they necessarily, do not represent America and arguably couldn't when they are elected. I'm sure glad the members of the political oligarchy of the last 50 years all came out to see Bush's body, but he served 1 term and did the job and he got older and died. No need for the Pharaoh worship week. Either POTUS is an elected position open to any qualified candidate or it's a big money elitist club G Carlin described where they like to engage in pomp and circumstance. While the truth may be fuzzy, I have my own opinion.

<comment><USER20> ==I'm sure glad the members of the political oligarchy of the last 50 years all came out to see Bush's body, but he served 1 term and did the job and he got older and died.==

To be fair, Bush I also served the country as Vice President, UN Ambassador, Director of the CIA, US Representative, and Navy Lieutenant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819538)

</comment><comment><USER22> Not exactly news. It's pretty to see the influence of various lobby groups on all levels of government. Most politicians, and especially those who have actual sway within the government, all come from a certain socio-economic background and have ultra-rich backers. Not to mention various entrenched political families (Kennedys, Clintons, Bushes, etc...), as well as close ties between politicians, rich political donors and the media.

</comment><comment><USER23> Did a research study need to be done to show this? The US Constitution sets up a federated oligarchic republic with slaves to boot. What's shocking is that it's shocking that the US has something like the government it was designed to have. . . .

</comment><comment><USER24> Technically the US is a Rebuplic. Which, in a sense, means it is largely a Democracy of Aristocrats. Who, it should be noted, have done a stellar job in the last 200 some-odd years of convincing the masses that the Aristocracy no longer (truly) exists. And so the People feel they have the power. When in reality it's all Smoke and Mirrors. Political Theater is nothing more than Circuses that the People can take part in. But the fact remains that Panem et Circenses still exists.

Or to put that in technical terms. "Democracy" (as understood in the common vernacular) is a honeypot that the People got caught in, at which time they got sandboxed.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder why US politics has not been positively hacked yet. Not talking about the Russians using FB but something revolutionary but not violent.

<comment><USER26> See mormons in the IC and Scientologists in the IRS/Treasury, and Verizon in the FCC....

I'd say it's been hacked pretty well - but only for cerrtain specific interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Dated [2014]

</comment><comment><USER28> We just have really good political theatre that gives the illusion of a lively democracy,:)</comment>


Ask HN: Where to migrate? - Google App Engine nightmare story - <AUTHOR> We have been using Google App Engine flexible for our backend since Feb 17. In Jan 18 we started getting 502 errors because of an issue in the load balancer. This issue was internal to GCP, our code was not at fault.
When the issue first appeared we were using the free support plan. To raise a support ticket I upgraded to silver plan which costs USD150/month. I explained my issue in detail that we have not changed anything at our end and suddenly 502 errors have appeared. It took me 15 days and a lot of back and forth emails to get an answer from GCP support. They gave a mysterious answer that there is an issue at GCP's end and they will reply back when it gets resolved. No ETA, no workaround, no information on why it happened.
I gave a lot of thought about moving to Heroku but it being so closed and locked in didn't feel right. AWS needs devops to keep it going. For our other app we have been using app engine standard without issues for 3 years, so I decided to go along with GAE for the time being. The issue got resolved in by Feb 1st week.
Today on 23rd March 502 errors appeared suddenly. I decided to speak to tech support. To do this I had to upgrade to gold support which costs USD400/month. I spoke to a support staff who said he doesn't have any information on this issue and I will get a reply back in 24hrs. No other reponse or help was provided.
I have finally decided to move away from GCP. Getting errors suddenly for 15 days and no workaround is too dangerous. And the support is too hard to get. Google it seems will always stay away from human interaction. They just don't want to deal with people directly. Getting support is hard.
I need help from the community to suggest some other managed services. Being a co founder and the only backend engineer I cannot do devops.
I know only 2 options: aws eb and heroku. Please give feedback and suggest more options.
I want to deploy: django + postgres + task queue <comment><USER2> I wouldn't give up on GCP that easy. Did you try the slack channel, they are pretty responsive

[https://gcp-slack.appspot.com/](https://gcp-slack.appspot.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I will try it now. The reason I am giving up is because GAE flexible is unreliable. twice it got the same issue and GCP had no answer why it is happening. Checkout these issues: [https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/70365151](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/70365151) [https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/71840041](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/71840041)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm really sorry to hear about your experience. In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm a PM for GCP. Please join the app engine slack channel as suggested before, and we can help you to debug your issue: [https://googlecloud- community.slack.com/messages/C0B9ET46S/](https://googlecloud- community.slack.com/messages/C0B9ET46S/)

<comment><AUTHOR> checkout this comment: [https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/71840041#comment17](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/71840041#comment17)

If GAE customers are not notified about issues in advance then GCP should announce that GAE is not production ready.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm using HostColor.com as Cloud infrastructure provider. They do VMware based infrastructure. In order to avoid downtime, I suggest you to get their Fault- Tolerant Cloud IaaS.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> PS: we are running a b2b app. The data stored is transactional. So any downtime is way too damaging for us and our clients.</comment>


Autumn (macOS window manager) now available on High Sierra - <AUTHOR> https://sephware.com/blog/2019-01-16-autumn-macos-window-manager-now-available-on-high-sierra <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, maker of Autumn here, would be glad to answer any questions or hear your feedback on Autumn! I just got it working this morning on High Sierra and it was interesting some of the things that made it not work there in the first place. One being that WKWebView on Mojave has Array.prototype.flatMap but on High Sierra does not, so I had to polyfill my own (2-line) version!</comment>


The mythical "Vista application" -- why lack of .Net adoption is Microsoft's real app-dev problem - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisedesktop/archives/2008/06/the_mythical_vi.html

<comment><USER2> It was a good article, with a good point: just because developers say they're not writing applications for Vista doesn't mean anything, since most things that work on XP and Win2k will continue to work on Vista. Well written, too.

But somehow, all these articles about Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, don't really strike me as interesting. Do we really care that much about what other analysts say? Does all that political and religious bickering over operating systems really matter? Somehow, reading the continuous articles about "Microsoft's Problem" or "Why (Mac|Google|Linux|Ubuntu) Will Win" or "Why Microsoft is Doomed" just doesn't really excite me. Maybe it's just me though.</comment>


Dot Com Boom. Web 2.0. Real Time Web. Mobile. What's Next? - <AUTHOR> http://dembot.com/post/932406793/future-webtrends

<comment><USER2> Mobile is really where Web 2.0 was in 2002 — we're really at the beginning at that market while the web is a mature market. The mobile market reminds me of the PC market in the 80s where brands were slugging it out to see who would survive. The web on the other hand has been around for 15 years and really reminds me of the PC market by the end of the 90s. On the web the winners are Google and Facebook -- in terms of software I can't honestly say who the top dog is yet. So to me mobile feels like it's still next...</comment>


The Dropbox Shared Folder API Beta - <AUTHOR> https://dropboxapi.wufoo.com/forms/dropbox-shared-folder-api-beta-contact-info/

<comment><USER2> Hi, I'm an API engineer at Dropbox. Happy to field any questions you guys may have!

<comment><USER3> Hey! I've watched some of the videos on all of dropbox's other apis and think I have a pretty good understanding about how developers would use them. I'm a little fuzzy on this one and was wondering if you could give an example or two of how a developer might leverage this.

Thanks!

<comment><USER4> There are a bunch of different use cases we have thought about.

Perhaps my favorite is a mirrored workspace. An app like Asana could use the Shared Folder API to create a Dropbox shared folder that mirrors an Asana project. As you add or subtract users, those changes affect both. Similarly files added via the Dropbox folder appear in Asana and files added in Asana are instantly put into your Dropbox. A video conference has similar concepts.

But there are tons more and we'd love to hear ideas from other folks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wanted this natively supported for ever. For now, I use Hazel* to sync every change inside an dropbox folder into an app folder. It works, but you know...

* [http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel](http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel)

<comment><USER2> May I ask what app you are using? It seems that the app has been set up to use App Folders, when, for your use case, it could be using the more liberal Full Dropbox or File Types permissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this mean we would soon be able to tell who initiated the sharing with somebody else? or who updated something shared?

Please say yes, please say yes :)

<comment><USER2> > Who initiated the sharing with somebody else?

This is supported while someone is an in the invited state, but the initial version likely won't support full auditing to answer the question "How did user X become a member of this folder?", though this is in our plans. Could you explain your use case?

> Who updated something shared?

Yes. And each revision in the revision history will include information on who updated the file.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I think your second answers covers my use cases. Let me explain them:

Currently, file's metadata has no ownership information. If I see it in my files or my deltas, it could be because either I created or somebody else created them in a shared folder or somebody else shared a folder with me and i accepted.

In other words, if user X adds a file to a shared a folder with user Y, when User Y requests for deltas from the API, I cant tell if the User Y is the creater of these files.

It looks like Id be able navigate the revision to figure out who created the file. or who placed it in the shared folder, so this api is certainly a welcome addition

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great more features are coming out from Dropbox. I am still hoping their April announcement will include a huge increase in storage capacity.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very excited by this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Excellent! I have wanted this for a long time.</comment>


Arrival of Obamacare forcing insurers to drop customers with low coverage - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57609224/arrival-of-obamacare-forcing-insurers-to-drop-customers-with-low-coverage/

<comment><USER2> Where "low" includes "not subsidizing the 50-64 set" if you're younger.

I've seen elsewhere potentially reliable estimates of 16 million policies being canceled out of a total of 18 million (the grandfathering is insanely strict).

</comment><comment><USER3> _"If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what."_ \- Barack Obama

<comment><USER2> As Jim Geraghty has been telling us before the 2008 election, " _All statements by Barack Obama come with an expiration date. All of them._ "

This is also happening to the people who use Medicare Advantage, the HMO style alternative to the original Part B coverage, which is good for a variety of people, especially the urban and less healthy. Being terminated with extreme prejudice by 2016 as I recall, getting thoroughly squeezed starting next year with "you're going to have to chose another PCP" notices going out right now.</comment></comment>


War of the platforms: Facebook, Apple, Android, Twitter. - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchen.co/2012/06/18/war-of-the-platforms-facebook-apple-android-twitter/

<comment><USER2> One of these does not belong, IMHO. I mean... jeez.</comment>


Lang.NEXT - A Free Event for PL Designers and Implementers Hosted By Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4465

<comment><USER2> Was I the only one that had to look up what PL stands for?

<comment><USER3> Given that the domain was lambda the ultimate and the name of the event was LANG.NEXT -- I think you might've been the only one. :-)

With that said, better to look it up than to just not know.

<comment><USER4> Programming Language. Might as well just say it if you're going to respond to that. ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone here use Keybase Teams? - <AUTHOR> I was recently looking at Keybase Teams. [0] Looks like a terrific product, does anyone here use it as an alternative to Slack?<p>[0] https://keybase.io/team/hners <comment><USER2> We use it mostly when Slack goes down, as it has a few times in the last few months. But lack of video calling and screen sharing make Keybase a no-go for us. If you don't need those, I HIGHLY recommend it.</comment>


48 hours to build 300 web apps. Rails Rumble Starts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.railsrumble.com/

<comment><USER2> This is my first year not participating in Rails Rumble-just too busy with real life and family. I'm excited to see what everyone comes up with this year.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish I had time to participate! Have any viable businesses came out of previous rumbles?

<comment><USER4> Off the top of my head, Zencoder was originally built during a Rails Rumble. I know there are others as well, but that one sprang to mind.

<comment><USER5> Yubnub.com came out of one of the first Rails days. It's still around, but I have no idea whether it's a profitable or not.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple is slapped with a patent lawsuit over the iPhone's browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/24/apple-slapped-with-patent-suit-over-iphones-browser/

<comment><USER2> Doesn't this happen about once every 24 hours? Wake me up when it reaches appellate court.

I would expect that Apple-suing patent trolls have their own online forum and FAQ by now.

</comment><comment><USER3> The other day I thought it would be nice if desktop browser easily did what iPhone's browser did.

Zooming into to parts of a page with a double-click would be really nice on those late nights where everything is getting blurry. (Yes, I know you can zoom in; it's not the same.)

<comment><USER4> I like to use control plus the mouse wheel to zoom in/out in the web browser -- not sure if this is what you mean by zooming.

One feature I like about Ubuntu's 3D-accelerated window manager is that it can zoom windows -- which is different from maximizing them because it makes everything (including menus, etc.) proportionally larger. So the "Windows key plus R" zooms until the focused window fills the screen. Win+1 zooms to standard desktop size, Win+2 zooms to double size, and Win+3 zooms to quadruple size, which are great for watching Flash movies that don't have a fullscreen option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a bullshit claim to me. MobileSafari renders webpages nearly exactly as it does on the desktop, not a "simplified navigation interface". The only big difference between desktop and iPhone Safari is you need to pinch to zoom in/out and drag to pan around, which this patent doesn't seem to cover at all.

The methods described in this patent for browsing the web sound like the exact sort of thing Apple was trying to avoid: the crappy sorta-kinda-web provided by WAP, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> I do wish someone would counter sue over the top - and burry a couple of these patent trolls; for the good of the industry.

<comment><USER7> I wonder if patent trolling could be patented? A time machine would be fantastic.

<comment><USER8> [http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/17/halliburton-tries- to.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/17/halliburton-tries-to.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Proponents of sex trafficking bill urge Silicon Valley to drop opposition - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/19/proponents-of-sex-trafficking-bill-urge-silicon-valley-to-drop-opposition <comment><USER2> After reviewing parts of the bill .. I agree with Google's comments about its broad wording.

Broad wording is what politicians love, because it lets government lump-under regulations & laws more things (even (especially?) things for which is was obviously not intended).

Precise wording is what technically-minded people prefer: clarity, concision, and focus.

Surely there is a balance that can address the problems of human trafficking without also threatening the 99.99994% of online users' free speech rights who view human trafficking to be as sickening as it is, but may happen to hold some collection of "unpleasant", "unpopular", or "sideline" views that don't jive with the majority (or, at least, the politically-correct class).

<comment><USER3> Actually, I think that hashing out the intent and reasonable/practical limits of a law based on its language is a job for the judicial branch, not Congress.

Laws didn't used to be massive 'we need to pass them to see what is in them' tomes. They used to be simple missives, written in everyday language, without umpteen dozen riders and special exemptions and funding stipulations and amendments and what-have-you. They used words and phrases like 'reasonable' or 'within reason,' rather than, 'a person shall be considered as belonging to Status B if they have retained Condition C for a length of time no less than 3 years but no more than 6, unless such a person can demonstrate Condition D...'

Judges used to have leeway in how they interpreted laws and applied sentences. Yes, it gave judges the power to give ridiculously short sentences and let their buddies/'our sort of people' get off scott free. And yes, it gave judges the power to give extremely heavy-handed sentences if they felt personally slighted. But they do those things today in our current system with minimal consequences, so I'd argue...so what?

I think that allowing people to act like people and reason like people is fundamental to any decent legal system. We can't try to make justice into some kind of an algorithm, because at the end of the day there's no reified reference for "Justice." There's just us.

<comment><USER2> > I think that hashing out the intent and reasonable/practical limits of a law > based on its language is a job for the judicial branch, not Congress.

It is the job of the judicial branch to apply law (after the executive branch pursues lawbreakers).

But look at simple, clear, concise laws vs things like the US tax code (which is annoyingly precise in some places, yet ridiculously vague in so many others) - the simpler, clearer, and - often - shorter the law, the better for _everyone_ involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems odd to me that we've settled on the weirdly euphemistic "trafficking" to describe slavery. It sounds like a marketing word intended to take the sting out of a distasteful concept, which I don't think is anyone's intention.

<comment><USER5> It seems odd to me we've settled on the weirdly, well, misleading "trafficking" to describe prostitution. It sounds like people who don't like prostitution are trying to lump in a relatively small percentage of women who were forced into the trade with women who chose it over other options.

<comment><USER4> ...Who's saying that? The article is specifically about forced sex slavery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If only we could ban online advertising of the sex trade we could eliminate the worlds oldest profession. Lets continue to make it illegal for consenting adults to have sex with other consenting adults, so that prostitutes can't go to the cops when abused by pimps. And so the incremental penalties for pimps trafficking children are as small as possible.

<comment><USER7> Uhhh. Sex trafficking != prostitution and involves forced sexual exploitation of unwilling or underage victims [1]. I'm not sure what you're going on about.

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

<comment><USER8> The two are related, because one major pillar of activism around "modern slavery" is based on opposition to sex work (the others being prurient interest, a kind of western saviour syndrome, and it being lucrative).

One random link I followed from the Wikipedia article is the source for the statement "Europe has the highest number of sex slaves per capita in the world". [http://realstars.eu/for-fair-sex/](http://realstars.eu/for-fair-sex/) The page prominently advocates for the Nordic model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a horribly-written law that would remove the CDA safe harbor from any civil or criminal proceeding in which conduct which would violate federal sex trafficking law is alleged, even if that conduct is not the central thrust of the law being enforced, and even if that conduct isn't actually proven in the legal action. As long as the prosecution is "targeting" conduct violating the federal sex trafficking law, the safe harbor would be removed.

(It's also dishonestly framed as a "clarification" when it's a radical dismantling of one of the core pillars of the CDA.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Without investigating further and just reading one paragraph from this article it is already quite clear that people try to use the moral high ground here to sell something that people usually wouldn't want to buy.

kafkaesq why did you share it?

*edit: And why is truth always so hard to take for people here?

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty torn on this. My immediate instinct is that it's yet another attempt to lock down the internet with "think of the children" histrionics. But _if_ the investigator's report on Backpage.com is accurate--if they _knowingly_ facilitated child sex slavery and then tried to cover it up--then it's genuinely fucked up that they can't be prosecuted for it. I'm also bothered by this quote:

> _"We would support a specific amendment that would allow victims to sue for > civil penalties in court to seek some form of redress for the horrible > things that have happened to them," said Slater, whose group represents tech > giants such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix._

Civil penalties are not sufficient for slavers. If the allegations are true, these people need to be in prison.

Edit: Please read my response below before downvoting. Backpage didn't block child-sex ads, they concealed and protected them, allegedly.

<comment><USER11> > if they knowingly facilitated child sex slavery and then tried to cover it > up--then it's genuinely fucked up that they can't be prosecuted for it.

By adding a word filter to keywords like rape and amber alert?

Okay, lets think about this, your product team happens to be looking at the system logs and sees an uptick in keywords like rape. The company's internal chat goes abuzz with this company wide emergency because some of the people are uncomfortable that their platform is being used for this, after an all hands meeting a simple solution is made to simply programmatically make a word filter. Phew, now the logs won't be polluted anymore and some underrepresented people "in tech" won't go to the NY Times, Washington Post and other esteemed outlets like Twitter about how triggered they were.

The whole thing had nothing to do with senators and law enforcement or what people were actually searching for, but this law would connect the dots in a completely different way and say that was criminal intent to cover up sex trafficking.

Even in this backpage example, searching with those key words wouldn't have helped anyone use the site? That part of the indictment made no sense thats why it got dismissed, the Senate is being steered by emotions and proposing silly solutions.

<comment><USER4> > _By adding a word filter to keywords like rape and amber alert?_

Read that section carefully. They didn't make a filter to _block_ ads with words like "rape" and "little girl"; they hid the keywords to make them harder to find _while leaving the ads up,_ and they did not report them to law enforcement. That's not keeping out abusers, that's _protecting_ abusers.

<comment><USER11> even though blocking ads is not what I suggested, there were still parts of that section that were unclear

were the ads saying "here's the vulnerable child you might have seen in the amber alert, in case you were searching for missing persons to rape" or something along those lines? How did you interpret it, and where could I find the truth of the matter

<comment><USER4> From the article: "Desiree Robinson, a 16-year-old girl who was brutally murdered in a Chicago-area garage last December, was sold through Backpage.com. Her mother, Yvonne Ambrose, testified at the hearing that her daughter was advertised on the website and purchased for sex by a 32-year-old man who killed her when she resisted."

In another story, a 13-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped, beaten, drugged, and put up for sale on Backpage, with pictures of her naked and battered. The girl was recovered alive and her kidnapper went to prison, but Backpage repeatedly refused to remove the ad and its pictures unless they were paid to do so. This was also linked directly from the article: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/06/backpage- ceo...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/06/backpage-ceo-arrested- sex-ads-forced-prostitution)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"As We May Think" – Vannevar Bush and the Memex - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex <comment><AUTHOR> See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think)

If you want to see previous discussions of this material, a good link is this one:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Vannevar%20Bush&sort=byDate&da...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Vannevar%20Bush&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)</comment>


Effectual Reasoning: What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial? (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.effectuation.org/sites/default/files/research_papers/what-makes-entrepreneurs-entrepreneurial-sarasvathy_0.pdf <comment><USER2> The effectuation theory is like an epiphany. To me it explains very well the sometimes counterintuitive elements of entrepreneurship. I wonder why this doesn't come up more in HN (in fact it's the first time I see it in the front page). I guess it's too academic compared to for instance the Lean Startup principles.

Shameless plug: If you want a non-academic summary of the theory, a few months ago I wrote about it in my (former) company's blog: [https://www.codelitt.com/blog/5-principles-of-successful- ent...](https://www.codelitt.com/blog/5-principles-of-successful- entrepreneurship/)

<comment><USER3> I actually think lean startup is more academic than effectuation theory because the former can be clearly defined while the latter cannot. Hence why one of them is popular and the other not

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Vinod Khosla (Sun Microsystems, Khosla Ventures) is a big fan of this piece. You can see his version here (has his notes in the margin):

[http://www.khoslaventures.com/wp- content/uploads/What_makes_...](http://www.khoslaventures.com/wp- content/uploads/What_makes_entrepreneurs_entrepreneurial.pdf)

As someone who's done a few entrepreneurial ventures and also has an MBA, the causal reasoning is indeed the default in most MBA programs.

</comment><comment><USER5> If this paper's differentiation of (1) effectual, (2) strategic, (3) managerial ... is interesting to you, another similar piece used the metaphor of commandos, infantry and police:

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and- police/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Realistically, what makes most entrepreneurs entrepreneurial is a reliable safety net provided by personal money. It is easy(ier) to take risks when your health care, housing, food and the other basis of survival do not depend on guaranteed success.

<comment><USER7> For what it's worth I kind of disagree based on personal experience. I'm quickly nearing the age of 40 and never had a real job. Being poor combined with the fear of failure has always been a great motivator for both productivity and creativity.

A lack of responsibility does more to make it easier to take risks than does having money. It's pretty easy for a single healthy person to earn enough money to survive if it all goes wrong. It's a lot harder if that person has other people depending on them for survival.

But surely if one has family to look after money is a requirement to take that kind of risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> TLDR: Sort of the academic version of the old saying "Big companies play chess, startups play poker."

<comment><USER9> TLDR: _The easiest way to predict the future is to build it._ ... and entrepreneurs believe in building it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Too bad it was not controlled with regular non-entrepreneurs folks. Hard to prove this test allow to separate entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial mindset, rather than prove that there is not much mindset variability among entrepreneurs about those particular 17 pages questions.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is really good, I feel almost angry that it was published nine years ago and I just read it for the first time.</comment>


Holiday Gifts to Avoid - <AUTHOR> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/holiday_gifts_avoid777

<comment><USER2> I would get a Nexus 4...if it had 4g lte.

</comment><comment><USER3> All true.</comment>


RePhone – Open Source Modular Phone Kit - <AUTHOR> https://www.seeedstudio.com/RePhone-Kit-Create-p-2552.html <comment><USER2> So it's basically a tiny module with low specs (4MB RAM) with some cardboard as a case.

This just makes me long for when they finally make smartwatches the can replace phones.</comment>


Ask HN: Any good examples of online mentoring websites? - <AUTHOR>

Seems like online mentoring is an underserved service and all the sites I have found look outdated. Know of any good ones? <comment><USER2> What sites have you already looked at?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.icouldbe.org/](http://www.icouldbe.org/) [http://www.horsesmouth.co.uk/](http://www.horsesmouth.co.uk/) [http://www.score.org/mentors](http://www.score.org/mentors) [http://www.mentornet.net/](http://www.mentornet.net/)

Mentor net looked the most up to date but doesn't show anything about the platform. Im interested in sites that differentiate themselves technologically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> www.pracly.com provides e-Advising for under $10 and that makes its pricing unbeatable

</comment><comment><USER4> clarity.fm sohelpful.me google helpouts

<comment><AUTHOR> Clarity.fm looks great. Sohelpful.me looks promising- I like the call schedule feature it has. Thank you very much.</comment></comment>


If I could pay by card in your shop - I'd do shopping here - <AUTHOR> http://blog.karolzielinski.com/if-i-could-pay-by-card-in-your-shop-id-do-shopping-here?sms_ss=hackernews <comment><USER2> There is currently an attempt to pass a bill limiting the fees banks can take from merchants when someone buys using a debit card. The supporters of this bill tend to myopically ignore points like this (among other things).

Edit: Recent story on this: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870425660457529...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704256604575295072627703504.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how much of this policy has to do with tax evasion? It's hard to avoid reporting credit/debit card income.

</comment><comment><USER4> For the shop owner(s), making the economic case for having a card merchant account comes down to several factors:

\- Size of typical transactions \- Volume of transactions per billing cycle \- % of charge-backs per billing cycle \- Charge-back volume compared to revenue \- Anticipated volume & revenue gains with the additional card buying channel \- Comfort level with dependency on 3rd-party accounting \- Comfort level with 3rd party data mining \- Comfort level with necessary technologies \- Additional management overhead due to accounting and card accouterments

Offhand, there are a variety of scenarios, esp. for boutique businesses in urban environments with ready access to ATMs, where a cash-only policy makes good business sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes it doesn't have a sense to install terminal for card payments. However it's a very rare exception.

In most cases not-only-cash policy makes good business sense. Especially when the competitors from the same street or at least competitors from the same industry have such terminals.

<comment><USER5> _competitors from the same street or at least competitors from the same industry have such terminals._

Same street or same industry doesn't mean focusing on the same clients. If most of your clients come for milk, bread & butter, it doesn't make sense to install hardware just because 2 dudes want to pay card for a pack of cigs.

I have 2 shops like that near me and both run well. The one which has more products and card payment obviously earns more and you can see that, but it doesn't mean that it's not a win-win situation, nor that the main reason of one's bigger success is the presence of a terminal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like OP, I also often don't carry cash, and I'm from Poland, however I assume certain rules apply to other countries too.

TINSTAFL. Shop owner pays for the POS terminal, pays for the phone connection, pays some percentage of the transaction and even for the printed logo on the bill. I don't believe any business owner would pay for that without charging clients for the cost, so in the end, it's split out onto the products prices. Specifically in Poland there's a law that f.ex. cigarettes cannot be charged more than the MSRP, but the rest of products obviously can, so in the end, you are the one who pays for the comfort of paying with plastic.

Also, cash is billed directly, money from bank transactions come with a (afair 2-3 days) delay, so obviously paper gives the business owner a better cash flow than plastic. Oh, and a very-cheapo Polish 7-11-alike Biedronka after many years of operation afaik still doesn't accept cards, and besides slave labour I think it's also a matter of being able to drop prices a bit more. So there's probably some common sense there. I don't like being unable to pay with card though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Biedronka is a discount shop. We can't require from these kind of shops that they may want to pay extra money for using terminals for card payments. Remember that in many of these stores you could find an ATM next to the till.

Most of the shops are not discount stores. They have normal products, with normal prices. They can (and should) pay some extra money for a possibility of card payments, because if they want to exist - they need to meet customers' needs. Today, most people expect that they will be able to pay by card.

<comment><USER5> _in many of these stores you could find an ATM next to the till._

which probably charge you for the transaction a lot, if it's not your bank or euronet.

I'm generally with you, I expect that services meet my needs and if I have a choice, I choose the ones that do. Personally it's sometimes hard to believe that someone can run a business excluding me as a target client ;) but somehow it's possible. And surprisingly, lots of the shops we assume they would struggle to exist, still run very well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It really depends on location. At my uni, most of everything is pay with cash, all the shops are close to an ATM so it really isn't a big deal and can help move things along if there are a lot of people around.

Other stores though it is frustrating, the thing that frustrates me the most is news agents with a $10 minimum when a newspaper is probably less than $2 and the average magazine comes in under to. I've offered to pay $10 for a $8 magazine before to avoid the hassle just to be told that they won't let me so I have to buy something I don't want to make the $10.

I understand the transaction fee problem, but I think the goodwill you get by allowing pay by card no matter how small the purchase offsets this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that paying by cash can help move things along, but that's the only one (in my opinion) argument for this kind of payments. I don't want to say: 'don't take cash', just: 'give your customers a choice. give them a chance to pay at least by cash, or by card'.

As for an amount of purchase... I understand transaction fee problems related to these kind of things. That's why I think that people need to realize that if they want to pay by card - they need to buy something more then just a newspaper. Unfortunately we can't jump over the bank charges.

However... it would be a really good idea to build a system, which would take money from your bank account or a credit card once a month for all the things you bought in that month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've recently moved to NYC for the summer to work at an internship and I'm surprised at just how many places here take cash only. For the first time in years i'm walking around with cash in my pockets, whereas back home my wallet is always empty except for my credit cards. It isn't just small towns but big cities as well. I will agree that visa is easier for the consumer, but I won't avoid shopping/eating somewhere that takes only cash.

</comment><comment><USER8> Certain shop owners fail to realize that managing cash (instead of plastic) is expensive too -- probably even more expensive than AMEX extremely high fees. If you factor in: counterfeited currency, risk of robbery, lost business, trip to bank to deposit/withdraw cash etc,, it's easy to see how expensive managing cash is. Here in Holland i'm actually starting to see shops that only deals with plastic and don't accept cash.

<comment><USER9> We actually find in our bricks&mortar that it's least expensive to deal with cheques (but only very very rarely does someone pay with a cheque). Customers believe that it is better to pay cash and that we must be charged a lot for card payments (they offer to go to the cash machine down the hill). Reality is that the bank screws us either way^W^W^W^W charge us for cash and card at about the same rate in our case - they make cheques free as we're an SME.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe the shops have their reasons. Don't know - I never run a shop. But I have a feeling the author of the article doesn't really know either.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. I've never run a shop.

However I know few of the shop owners. All of them are saying the same thing: problem is money or sometimes technical issues (e.g. someone doesn't know how to use computer or a terminal for card payments; doesn't want to learn new things; is afraid of new technology).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It the same mentality that cabbies are against taking cards in taxis.

They did studies and found people tip more when using a card. And I know if I don't have cash myself and I know the cabs will take a card I'd catch one rather then find some alternative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely agree. Good point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Actually having a cash buffer and paying with it is quite healthy habit.

You get this understanding after a while though, for me it was past 30.

</comment><comment><USER13> Pay with cash: keep the fat cat bankers out of the deal.

<comment><USER14> Unless you have to go to an ATM and pay a fee for using cash that's much greater than what the merchant is charged for the transaction.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Offers Secure Windows … But Only to the Government - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/air-force-windows/ <comment><USER2> It seems that Microsoft merely provided the Air Force with standard Windows, pre-configured with a template according to their specifications. If somebody has a pointer to some reference that indicates that Microsoft provided them with a tweaked version of Windows (not just tweaked configuration templates), please give us a pointer to it.

Microsoft already provides similar pre-built configuration templates on its website for everybody to download. For example, when it gets security certifications, it distributes the templates it used for the certifications. Other security-related organizations also provide their own recommended templates along with documents explaining them setting-by-setting. Using (tweaked) versions of those templates has been standard practice for any professional Windows network administrator since at least Windows 2000.

[edit: I am pretty sure that we can get the government's standard templates available too. I know the NSA has made some available for a long time now, for example.]</comment>


Finland's plan to train its population in artificial intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.eu/article/finland-one-percent-ai-artificial-intelligence-courses-learning-training/ <comment><USER2> Controversial opinion as a machine learning researcher:

Well roundedness (or teaching basic elements to many) will not pay off as much, it would likely yield better results for the country to invest heavily at the top.

Observation based on success of machine learning research in highly concentrated organisations (certain universities in the US, DeepMind, etc) versus countries with scattered expertise and resources (e.g. Germany).

If you can afford to, do both, but observationally, this does not seem to happen. Not for a lack of resources but rather the mindset and a society's perspective.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, Finland punches massively above its weight when it comes to tech in general - while the US, being the world's largest economy, punches _at_ its weight. That would indicate the generally egalitarian Finish approach is better than the darwinian US approach.

My feeling is that while the US is phenomenally good at delivering an excellent education to a small set of extremely talented people, I get the feeling that these people go on to not have enough free time to do really interesting work, and rather end up devoting their lives to industry, which is predominantly very conservative[1].

[1]: Obviously, I think this is offset by the fact that US industry is less conservative and more interested in abstract research than it is in most other countries, so you do get really cool research being done. But I think generally speaking, this model isn't as effective as just letting most people in society do more of the stuff that interests them, and less of the stuff that doesn't.

<comment><USER4> The whole idea that a country like Finland could create and maintain talent without a domestic market is completely silly, if not entirely unsupported. Which is also true for much of the US. Arguably even the Soviet Union couldn't.

And if you actually had to choose between "top talent" and "mainstream appeal" the latter has orders of magnitude better returns. A larger part of the modern economy is built on that fact, including much of Silicon Valley.

If you could just invest in talent many countries would pass the US in no time. But unsurprisingly those investments mostly yield handshakes and cocktail parties.

<comment><USER3> I think Silicon Valley is quite a good refutation of your point, actually -- it was almost entirely founded on DARPA investing in talent. After all, they funded everything from the first ICs to Chomsky.

I don't think mainstream appeal is irrelevant. I just think that if you fund scientists and technologists to do the work they find interesting, they'll produce something more fundamentally interesting and generally useful than if you fund them to make great products. Great products, after all, include things like Minecraft, pet rocks, and fidget spinners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps they can use their new found AI skills to detect and flag propaganda from the tech industry.

<comment><USER6> So when it's some silicon valley tech company releasing something as part of their tech marketing strategy it's fine, but when it's from Europe it's "Propaganda"?

<comment><USER7> I don't think grandparent's attempt at humour suggested that, but it's good that you drew that parallel.

<comment><USER6> Well, it's not a secret that a lot of the content in HN is marketing content. Usually from companies who want to market themselves among the tech community.

I'm not complaining. I learn a lot, and most of the times everyone wins. But it's not the first time I find this US/Rest of the world double standard.

Maybe this was a knee jerk reaction from me to that pre existing notion

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is AI settled enough that today's state-of-the-art is a stable foundation that can be reliably built upon... or are revolutionary changes just around the corner? Or, it is that the _application_ of some generic AI, that can use any upcoming changes?

Perhaps we have a few more twenty year hype-winter cycles of NN before we know what we're doing...

<comment><USER8> > intention to "support democracy," ... raise awareness about the > opportunities and risks of AI ... where they want their government to > invest.

> "That's how society works — if enough people say they don't like it, then we > regulate it,"

Agree, democracy needs uninformed voters. But the above was just the origin.

Now the course seems more like encouraging people to see applications of AI in their regular work. Like pure vs applied maths. Agree: technology transfer/commercialization of AI will be the richest industry the world has ever seen.

[ Though it's a bit like applications of _computers_ [funfact: many software ideas were initally called AI... like how subjects moved from philosophy to science when they got actual facts]. Although computers are an "industry", their applications are considered vertical, i.e. as part of the industry they are applied to. Same thing happened to physics. So AI applications won't be "an industry", but in every industry. ]

Another question is whether the application best starts from the AI end or the application end. You need both, but at this early stage, it's still requires an intertwined "integrated" collaboration. I don't think we're yet at the point where you just add magic AI pixie dust to a problem.

But it can't hurt getting people introduced to it and thinking about it; and the democratic point remains true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone explain what is in this 'Elements of AI' course, since that doesn't seem to be described in the article? I'm just having a hard imagining what can be taught in a few months to e.g. the dentist in the article and still be 'practical'.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.elementsofai.com](https://www.elementsofai.com)

It's not a course where you learn how to implement algorithms, but a general introduction to the concepts and problems that typically are treated under the label 'AI'.

<comment><USER11> As usual, this is a course that completely ignores the first, oh, 60 or so years of artificial intelligence research which were dominated by logic-based AI, and places most of the focus on deep learning, as the only kind of machine learning that it talks about at any length.

Sometimes, I despair. It's like AI started in 2012 - and was wrapped up the same year. Deep neural nets, problem solved, AI is all done and dusted.

<comment><USER12> Did you click through to the course? Chapter 2 is about search algorithms and planning, albeit not in very much depth.

<comment><USER11> Yes, of course I did. The relative attention given to the majority of work on AI and the last six years or so is disproportionate, to say the least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always admired Sweden for committing to robotics (it was back in the 90's I think, at a time when I was doing robotics work for Fanuc and GE). They went from nothing to becoming a major robotics player over decades.

In contrast, I think committing to AI is a mistake - the market is fundamentally different. To put it simply - there is lots and lots of work to be done in robotics, over decades, while, in contrast, there is a big burst of work to be done in AI, followed by relatively little work (compared to the scale of robotics.) I admire Finland, and I hope somebody out there figures out the business difference before they lose decades to opportunity cost.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh yeaaaaaah... Like modern "coding mania" at school... Guys IT world is as complex as a society: you can't train anyone to be a prime minister in such society before train in being an educated citizen.

Most Finnish child can type on a Window PC with some proprietary (cr)app. They can probably play games, watch porn sites, social networks etc and that's for some older people seems to be like magic so they think that "programming" is only a small subsequent step like you can study integrals just after derivatives. And that's the ideal way to put people far from computer disgusted by obscene software and absurd training.

<comment><USER15> _> they think that "programming" is only a small subsequent step_

No, they think programming is a basic skill (like reading, writing and arithmetics) included from 1st to 9th grade in the national core curriculum: [https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/02/teachi...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/02/teaching- computer-science-without-computers/517548/)

Details: [https://legroup.aalto.fi/2015/11/coding-in-school-finland- ta...](https://legroup.aalto.fi/2015/11/coding-in-school-finland-takes-lead- in-europe/)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the link however the point is simple: people who write those norms have no idea what programming means and how it can be done in modern desktops.

If, and only of, we have modern Alto or LispM perhaps we can teach few "programming" concept to let most scholarized people able to script/design their own "home environment" on a desktop otherwise it's only a waste of time especially if is done as classic high schools in Italy or Sweden (starting with some Pascal dialect end try to offer C or JS after).

<comment><USER15> Finland doesn't do it like Italy or Sweden (let alone how they did it 20 years ago). Instead, kids are more likely to start with Scratch or similar: [https://scratch.mit.edu](https://scratch.mit.edu)

<comment><USER14> I'm curious how they can get enough teachers. I mean people who now IT enough not only to being able to actually "program" themselves for real a bit but also teach to children.

In my personal experience even at universities (Italy with very limited knowledge of Swedish unis) for IT-centric courses we have only _very few_ really competent teachers that also are able to communicate their competence well, transmitting passion for the matter, drawing a big number of possible evolution paths, instill the desire to explore autonomously, solving personal problems etc...

Perhaps today's things have change but...

Oh, sooner or later we _need_ to seriously teach IT like we seriously teach our motherlanguage because that's the actual nervous system of our society and we not only should but must know it enough to being able to master the part needed to our life and having an informed opinion on that topic to avoid disastrous trends like today's one, only I really can't imaging how to form enough people.

Even in casual events organized by LUG or few companies/universities I hear casual conversation from "supposed" technicians that make me shiver or from certain mailing lists...

<comment><USER15> In Finland, teaching is a respected profession with a Master's degree required and teachers are paid a proper salary and given autonomy in the classroom in return.

They don't have to be professional-grade developers - they are professionals in general pedagogy and mentoring.

<comment><USER14> I do not intend to judge the level of competence or respect of Finland's teacher's only I'm _really_ curious how they were formed in the first place.

In general when something new appear (to stay, with success) we have a pioneering phase that start to "form and initially spread" the new "thing". This phase may be quick, however it have to be at least 5-8-10 years to be "spread and know enough". After we have a "consolidation and popularization phase" that normally last long, 10-15 years if it's quick, after it became spread and know enough to have enough "thought currents", it have developed a sort of "stable" philosophy etc. This is the stage we can start to form teachers, normally for tech schools and universities. Only after a decade or even a generation we can start to arrive at "initials schools" teachers.

Counting those years and see "IT age"... Well, we can say we are at start phase of teaching in schools, so it's really hard to have enough competent and "tested" teachers now...

Also about pedagogy and professionalism I remember a personal observation, limited to universities, before I have observed too little: teachers with professional background tend to know far better what they teach and normally are more capable to communicate it. Teachers coming directly from academia tend to know far less and are far less able not only to communicate but also to create interest and transmit passion.

Of course that's not a valid statistics nor I can generalize it for the entire world but... Well just as an example at first year of computer engineering degree course I have a course in chemistry, the first part was held by an teacher "definitively and proudly made in academia", it was a disaster not only for me. The second part by an actual chemistry doctor coming from the industry that start teaching to remain active instead of retire. For some results was still poor for other me included was really well. The same for economy course. The same for all subsequent courses and years. The third year in particular nearly no one digest mathematical physics (a sort of variant of rational mechanics adopted for a not-really-industrial engineering course), the second semester another teacher results completely changes. For essentially all.

Long story short: only few know how to transfer knowledge and I can call them "pedagogues" do not caring to much if they study that subject or they are naturally brought to teach. That's needed but not sufficient. Competence in the field is also needed and for non-academic discipline it's hard to have gained, metabolized and summarized enough to teach. Also passion for the matter is needed and that's again should be trained and formed in years of activities. Like a construction worker's that see if something is valid by instinct even before actually calculate it. Only people with such experience can properly teach. And while normally young schools are considered "easier" to teach is at that stage that we really form our knowledge and start to develop paradigms.

<comment><USER15> I should clarify that the context of my comments was grades 1-9 where the content is fairly simple and the target level is nowhere near professional skills. I'm not saying the teaching is perfect (it's always far from that) but the results in other topics are good and I don't see why they wouldn't be good in programming as well. If you're saying it's too early, I say the earlier we get the virtuous cycle going the better (the previous generation of teachers will teach the next generation to be better).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That is ideal direction - educating the non-IT people with domain knowledge what tools the IT people can provide then both can work on solving real world issues with AI. I predict lots of serious start-ups comming out of this effort.

</comment><comment><USER17> Machine Learning is Alchemy [https://youtu.be/x7psGHgatGM](https://youtu.be/x7psGHgatGM) . We need to understand optimization to advance this field not train thousands of monkeys to press play and hope for a nice result.

Also, why did they not decide to teach 1% of the population basic coding. Now that could transform a society.

<comment><USER18> Basic programming skills have been a part of the Finnish primary school curriculum since 2016. By sixth grade students are expected to "create working programs in a graphical programming environment". Junior high includes "basic algorithmic thinking", more programming and embedded programming.

Likely in practice means trying out Scratch in primary school and creating robots in junior high.

Source: [https://peda.net/ulvila/peruskoulut/harjunp%C3%A4%C3%A4n-kou...](https://peda.net/ulvila/peruskoulut/harjunp%C3%A4%C3%A4n-koulu/opetus/ol2/tjvs/oo2/oop)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Most machine learning models are nothing but souped up regression that swaps out standard polynomials for matrix-valued polynomials with some x'es replaced by non-linear activation functions like tanh(x)

The magic is in the toolkits that allow one to build these complex expressions through net chain composition, and provide symbolic differentiation to easily calculate gradient on hugely complex net chain graphs.

The avg person isn't going to benefit from ML unless you also teach them the old-hat statistical fitting methods that worked well enough before ML came on the scene.

Things like SVD, MPCA: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_value_decomposition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_value_decomposition) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilinear_principal_componen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilinear_principal_component_analysis)

Old stats techniques like: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastic_net_regularization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastic_net_regularization)

Its not worth training a bunch of folk who cant go deep into the heavy mathematics, statistics, and epistomology of what ML really is in terms of manifolds.

Just show them what ML can and cannot do, if its not possible to give them the comprehensive education. And besides, most people, once they find out ML is a shit ton of math and as profound and based as the theory of functions, shakes their head and trods off. They wanted magic soup and you gave them the biggest questions about existence..about patterns..forms..things..about consciousness, intelligence, and life, about meaning.

Don't expect the avg lowbrow person to want to explore ML once they get hit with the reality of its implications, rigor, and depth.

<comment><USER20> > Most machine learning models are nothing but souped up regression that swaps > out standard polynomials for matrix-valued polynomials with some x'es > replaced by non-linear activation functions like tanh(x)

Well, not quite. The non-linear activation feature is found already in "generalized linear models" (as a 'link function'). The typical "deep learning" model is a hierarchical/multi-level version of the same - and just like any other hierarchical/multi-level model, the point of that is to account in a parsimonious way for increasingly-complicated _interactions_ among the regressors/features. But I think your broader point is right; there is a lot of hype in ML that derives purely from a lack of familiarity with basic statistical principles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's why we should all vape !

</comment><comment><USER22> It wasn't clear if this is the Elements of AI course or another course.

<comment><USER23> I remember signing up for this a while back, but never found the time to take it. I assume it's the same course because I remember the website looking so "trendy"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is rather old news already by now. It's been a few months</comment>


Dolphin Progress May and June 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2020/07/05/dolphin-progress-report-may-and-june-2020/ <comment><USER2> Slightly related, a couple of weeks ago a guy named Fizzi released a dolphin build with rollback netcode support for Super Smash Bros Melee, making it a game with better netcode than most current big name fighters.

The way he implemented it is insane, he had to reverse engineer a way to generate arbitrary game states in game, as using dolphin savestates was not performant enough.

He's also added other amazing features, like in game matchmaking, or my favorite, being able to stream a game state through the Wiis ethernet port, so two players can be competing on original hardware while a stream setup upscales that footage in realtime to 16:9 4k through Dolphin, and also generates real time match stats, saves replays... Incredible stuff.

Here's the project page: [https://slippi.gg/](https://slippi.gg/) and a video from a top melee player showcasing the matchmaking: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erbZV8u6-hA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erbZV8u6-hA)

<comment><USER3> > Fizzi released a dolphin build with rollback netcode ... making it a game > with better netcode than most current big name fighters.

I see this repeated often without justification. Why is rollback better?

Based on my basic understanding, rollback netcode would absolutely fall apart under any suboptimal network conditions. If there's too much lag or packet loss, you and the opponent character will start teleporting all over the screen, missing lots of inputs, etc.

It makes sense that rollback netcode would be preferable when paired with a very good, reliable network (e.g. so if any rollback is needed, it's only a frame or two). But if you're selling a casual game meant for anyone to be able to play, a delay based netcode makes more sense to me. An average Joe can understand "the game is buffering", but if the game starts rolling back too much and you can't control your character because he's teleporting all around, that just looks like a broken game.

An interesting follow up question: if rollback is objectively the better approach, why is it implemented less often? Is it significantly more difficult to develop and does that offset how much value it would add to the game?

<comment><USER4> Rollback is not a replacement for delay-based, but an enhancement to delay. Slippi, for example, still delays the inputs by 2 frames to minimize the inconsistencies that appear. This can (in theory, not sure if it's implemented in slippi) be increased to any number of frames to reap the benefits that delay based netcode has. Only using delay is objectively inferior because any flaw that rollback has is also shared by delay. You are welcome to try out the old Melee netplay and compare it to the new Slippi to experience this for yourself.

The reason rollback is rarely implemented is because it is hard to motivate a company to do it when the benefits are so intangible. "Better netcode" doesn't really sell games, flashy graphics does. And since most of the FGC has existed offline, online is just an afterthought.

This video explains fairly well: [https://youtu.be/1JHetORRpfQ](https://youtu.be/1JHetORRpfQ)

<comment><USER5> That and most developers are in Japan, where rollback doesn't show any real benefit because the infrastructure there is small and fast enough to make even the worst netcode viable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> yjftsjthsd-h Am I the only one constantly blown away by how _deeply_ they can hook into games? Not just "we perfectly emulate the original hardware and produce pixel- perfect screens", but "we read the 3D models and can increase resolution and widen the view" \- that's crazy! It's totally different than how I usually imagine "emulation".

<comment><USER6> That's partly because we got tremendously lucky in how the hardware sends data. Unlike some newer GPUs, the hardware has dedicated memory for the Projection and Model-View Matrices, and the vertex pipeline is fixed-function.

Dolphin isn't reading 3D models, they're just tweaking the matrices that the game sends. Increased resolution sort of similar the same -- the game sends the hardware triangles in an abstract model space, which is converted to clip space (where the left of the screen is -1.0 and the right is 1.0). Increasing the resolution just means adjusting the rest of the transform; everything the game sends is in abstract space.

(Yes, I know there's a bit more to it than that, e.g. virtual XFBs, LOD biases, and so forth)

Basically, unlike the PS2, the GameCube is pretty much an ancestor of modern PC GPUs, so its way of doing graphics is very familiar to us, and maps quite well. And this is not an accident! ATI bought the company that made the GameCube's GPU (ArtX), and put out a GPU so good (the r300) that NVIDIA nearly went out of business.

Also, fun, I ran into the same "GLES doesn't support glReadPixels for depth" when working on the lens flare code for Wind Waker and Super Mario Galaxy in [https://noclip.website](https://noclip.website). Had to do some dirty tricks to convert it to a color format first.

<comment><USER7> What happened after that ? What turned the wave in favour of nVidia ? I was there (as a player) but I don't have clear memories.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that ATI's management bungled the software aspect, fell super behind on driver development, and gave NVIDIA way too much time to catch up, but you'll probably have to talk to someone that was there at ATI to figure out what really happened.

<comment><USER8> Nvidia acquiring 3DFX Interactive certainly helped. IIRC, 3dfx was spanking both Nvidia & ATI, who's offerings were superior to Nvidia, in the PC graphics market.

<comment><USER9> Not really. NVidia bought 3DFX for the Voodoo/Rampage T&L IP in 2000, around the same time that ATI bought ArtX.

The R300/Radeon 9700 (based on the ArtX IP) came out late summer of 2002, and several months later NVidia launched the dismal GeForce FX series (which is the project that most of the 3DFX "rampage" team went to work on after acquisition). The fundamental problem with NVIDIA's design was that it was optimized for 16-bit precision pixel shaders, and then-new DirectX 9's "pixel shader 2.0" model mandated a 24-bit minimum precision. The R300 ran FP24 math natively, and consequently ran circles around the FX series in DX9 performance.

NVidia didn't really catch up to and surpass ATI until much, much later.

<comment><USER8> My timeline was off,in the late 90' the 3DFX Voodoo(3?l was eating both their lunches.

I agree ATI still dominated Nvidia in sales well into the 00's, Nvidia took a long time to offer competitive cards. The solder issues & Cap Plague didn't help them any, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a cool project.

It reminds me a bit of this multi-year, labor-of-love project: [http://www.starryexpanse.com](http://www.starryexpanse.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious if they'd tried using CHD. It's worked pretty well for MAMEdev, and even the RetroArch core versions of a few emulators support it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Thought this was going to be about the KDE file explorer, which is an excellent piece of software, btw.

</comment><comment><USER12> re-encoding my gczs into rvzs right now. looks like I am going to slash about 10 GB off my 65GB library.

<comment><USER13> Did you find more info on rvzs? The progress report makes it sound like rvz compresses random data, but that's plainly not true. I'd love to understand what "garbage data" actually is. It must actually have lots of pattern, rather than being random data.

<comment><USER14> It's data not pointed to by the filesystem. Most of the time it's zeroes, but it could be meaningful data for copy protection or sometimes even source code was found (this last thing IIRC, I might be confusing two different things).</comment></comment></comment>


Beijing Court Declares Apple Has Infringed Chinese Patent (iPhone 6/6 plus) - <AUTHOR> http://english.cri.cn/12394/2016/06/17/3821s931154.htm <comment><USER2> There's some great irony in here.

<comment><USER3> I can only imagine what Samsung execs are saying to each other right now...</comment></comment>


How to automatically choose a camera viewing angle for any 3D model - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cubehero.com/2013/05/15/how-to-automatically-choose-a-camera-viewing-angle-of-any-3d-model/

<comment><USER2> This approach is using the bounding box size and longest dimension to choose a camera distance and angle. It works better than static pose and it's computationally cheap.

However, it can oversimplify for objects which are significantly asymmetrical. A good place to go from here is statistical measures of object recognizability:

Betke & Makris, Information-Conserving Object Recognition.

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.44.4...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.44.4162)

For 3D models, you can use hierarchical space carving to simplify the mesh first. You don't need great resolution, you just need better resolution than a rectangular bounding box.

(Note: PCA can be used for recognizability, but is not ideal. Highish complexity & overly general.)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a lot of academic work in this area that's relevant, dating back at least 10 years. I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned.

Maximizing the entropy of projected normals works well, for example, like this paper by Polonsky et al.: [http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~gotsman/AmendedPubl/Oleg/Polon...](http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~gotsman/AmendedPubl/Oleg/Polonsky_et_al.pdf)

A related problem is automatically figuring out the "natural orientation" of a mesh, so your automatic renderings don't look upside down by accident. Fu et al. use pretty simple machine learning tools: [http://www.cs.ubc.ca/nest/imager/tr/2008/upright_orientation...](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/nest/imager/tr/2008/upright_orientation/)

<comment><USER4> Secord et al. also did a perceptual study in which they determined which features were most correlated with user viewpoint preference and built models for viewpoint preference based on this information: <http://gfx.cs.princeton.edu/pubs/Secord_2011_PMO/index.php>

<comment><USER5> Interesting. The OP got me thinking along the lines of manually tagging salient features of each model (as well as ranking models by salience, either manually or automatically based on criteria related to the object that the model represents).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious whether you could use the 3D vertex coordinates and use principal component analysis to find an appropriate viewing angle. Example: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfTMmoDFXyE>

PCA is often overused but for this specific use case it seems very well suited.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I hadn't thought to use PCA, but I'll try it out, and report back, along with other peoples' suggestions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, my (admittedly naive) idea would be to render several shots of the product from different quasi-random angles and look at the final entropy/contrastiness of the image to find the most interesting one (the one that captures most detail).

<comment> alok-g And if fine-tuning of the angles is desired, a genetic algorithm should work great for optimization in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Curious as to how the pictures would compare to a simple principle component analysis algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER9> I see a lot of pictures with parts chopped of there though. The very first picture has the top clipped. In the Cubehero screenshot, there are multiple chopped off ones, including the top right one. Why chop off a small part?</comment>


Xerox PARC, Apple, and the Creation of the Mouse - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all <comment><USER2> A bit of revisionist history. There are so many versions of the "truth" even for events in recent history.</comment>