Health Care Doesn't Affect Health (on the margin) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/09/10/robin-hanson/cut-medicine-in-half/

<comment><USER3> A quote from one of my favorite books. The speaker is a poet from about 500 BC:

"Some of my best friends have been doctors, and excellent people they were, most knowledgeable about the minds of men, whom they see when the poets do not. But doctors are taught their laws, and they keep those laws if it kills you. Some of them here in Sicily come asking how a wanderer like me has kept such good health to past fourscore. I tell them this or that. It would be uncivil to say that whenever in my travels I get a touch of fever, I go quietly to bed and send for the local wise-woman."

Pretty good advice today, too.

I'd like to see Robin's point of view get a wide hearing. I'm afraid he's trying to paddle against a powerful current the other direction, though.

<comment><USER4> Is "local wise-woman" an euphemism for a woman of negotiable affections? I don't understand how a woman possessing wisdom can help your fever.

<comment><USER5> Read "witch" or "herbalist" or "evidence-based medical practitioner unwilling to go by fads and humours".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are four levels of health: how healthy you are, how much health care coverage you get, how much health care coverage insurance you have, and what percentage of the population has insurance.

We've been arguing that increasing the percentage of those with a certain level of health care coverage insurance would be good for aggregate health.

My intuition is that removing corn subsidies would have a greater effect - <USER2> the aggregate health of the world would drastically increase if you consider the African sugar farmer who can't sell to western markets because of regulations and subsidies. Ohh, and it would make money, not cost money.

<comment><USER7> > My intuition is that removing corn subsidies

Heck, why not go ahead and remove _tobacco_ subsidies!

<comment><USER6> Corn syrup isn't addictive. I think the cigarette market would be fine without subsidies. Of course, I agree completely to remove those limits.

I find it's like solving global warming like painting a roof white, or working from home - extremely cheap and obvious ways to change things. That governments don't choose these options is likely because their goal is power, not progress.

Removing subsidies, lowering regulation, legalizing pot, etc., would all be revenue generators and add to the public good.

<comment><USER8> > I find it's like solving global warming like painting a roof white, or > working from home - extremely cheap and obvious ways to change things.

Except for the part that they don't work. For example, painting your roof white saves energy in some climates but not others.

> That governments don't choose these options is likely because their goal is > power, not progress.

That's half correct. The goal is power but progress isn't something that govt opposes, it's something that doesn't matter either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It wouldn't surprise me if the health of the _average_ person is not significantly affected by the amount spent on medical care. So what? The whole point of insurance is to protect the policy-holder from the risk of outcomes that are _much worse than average_.

My seven-year-old son has a friend with hemophilia; if he didn't get regular infusions of clotting factor and similar treatments, he might live for another ten years--fifteen, tops. The quality of his health coverage certainly has an effect on _his_ health. And he is exactly the sort of patient that the insurance companies will drop like a hot rock at the earliest excuse.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are arguing against a point the article isn't making. There are two types of treatments:

1\. Marginal treatments, or treatments you will not pay for out of pocket, but will consume if they are free. These comprise 30% or more of treatments.

2\. Non-marginal treatments, which you will buy regardless of whether insurance pays for them.

Your son's friend's hemophilia treatments sound like they fall into category 2. The article argues that category 1 treatments are useless (equally likely to harm or help you).

<comment><USER10> This strikes me as a false dichotomy, especially since I believe the hemophilia treatments fall into the first of two additional categories:

3\. Treatments you will pay as much _as possible_ for. This category may not be distinct from category 2 for a single adult with no family.

4\. Treatments which have a high enough out-of-pocket cost, that it is a factor in the consumption decision.

A personal example falls into category 4. Two migraine aborting treatments work for me, rizatriptan in tablet form and sumatriptan in injection form. The first requires about 3 hours for full effect, whereas the second takes under an hour. The differences in cost between insurance an no insuranceare around $25 and $100, respectively.

In the context of missing a full day of work, even the $100 falls into category 2. However, during unemployment, on a weekend or an evening, even $25 is enough that it's not "free," but even the $100 isn't so much that I wouldn't pay for it out of pocket, depending on the circumstances.

These treatments may well reduce my "health" by any objective measure, including lifespan, but they certainly improve my productivity and quality of life, something the article seems to ignore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article reminds me a lot of conspiracy theorists and their "anomaly hunting" - throwing out as many anomalies as possible leaving little chance to consider/rebut them before moving onto the next thing, and claiming victory when no one bothers. I'm not an expert on many of the things listed, but many stick out as just not making any sense:

First of all, holy special pleading batman! Pretty much right at the beginning he redefines health care to exclude things he admits work - diet, exercise, sleep, not smoking, etc. Who does he think figured out that smoking was bad? Or how much exercise and sleep is enough, and how much is too much? Or what foods are good for you and which are bad?

He also claims that there are "dozens of studies of the aggregate health effects of medicine", but most of the studies he describes are very specific - several only studying the last six months of people's lives, ignoring how many cases of people living extra _years_ because of medicine? He also admits that increased social status improves health while claiming that increased medical spending does not. But it's well known that the rich can afford better health care, and doesn't explain how to (or cite any papers that) control for this.

Lastly, he only considers length of life and totally ignores _quality of life_. I take an antidepressant for my anxiety, and while it probably will not affect the length of my life, it sure as hell is worth every penny in improving the _quality_ of my life!

<comment><AUTHOR> I strongly suggest you read the article before commenting.

 _Pretty much right at the beginning he redefines health care to exclude things he admits work - diet, exercise, sleep, not smoking, etc._

No he doesn't. That was a bad choice of title on my part when I submitted the article. I should have titled it "Medical Care Doesn't Affect Health (on the margin)". But like most people, I use the terms "health care" and "medical care" interchangeably.

The bigram "health care" does not appear once in the article.

 _He also admits that increased social status improves health while claiming that increased medical spending does not. But it's well known that the rich can afford better health care, and doesn't explain how to (or cite any papers that) control for this._

This is simply not true. He cites a number of cross section studies which compare rich/poor/etc people receiving more medicine to rich/poor/etc people receiving less. He also cites the RAND experiment which was actually a randomized trial addressing the same question.

 _Lastly, he only considers length of life and totally ignores quality of life..._

False. The RAND experiment studied various health measures, not mortality.

<comment><USER10> > _Lastly, he only considers length of life and totally ignores quality of > life..._ > >False. The RAND experiment studied various health measures, not > mortality.

That may be the case, but the author makes it clear enough that, even in this case, it is mortality with which he is concerned:

"The RAND experiment was not quite large enough to see mortality effects directly, and so the plan was to track..."

I must agree that there is a distinct absence of focus on quality of life, which I believe is the crux of the issue, especially at the expensive margins, near the end of life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Quick summary - from the article:

"If you would not pay for medicine out of your own pocket, then don't bother to go when others offer to pay."

Overall a well argued article.

<comment><USER13> I would say the quick summary would be:

"In the aggregate, variations in medical spending usually show no statistically significant medical effect on health."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Robin's got a lot more on medical care at <http://www.overcomingbias.com/tag/medicine> . You need to go back a few months or more to get stuff like this essay though; most of his newer stuff is on status signalling and medicine.

</comment><comment><USER15> Bad analogy. Most automotive defects lead to breakdowns, not serious crashes. Most serious automotive crashes aren't caused by mechanical defects. When your car DOES breakdown, you buy a new one. Preventative medicine and lifestyle practices extends life in lieu of the option of replacing your body

</comment><comment><USER8> Indoor plumbing matters, as does garbage pickup and food and water safety.</comment>


Overview of JPEG XT (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://jpeg.org/jpegxt/ <comment><USER2> XT, XR, XL, XS. I wish the names were more meaningful. I can never remember which one is which or what they're good for, or even which order they came in (and the jpeg.org pages don't even list years).

JPEG XL is the one currently in development, and it has what sound like some really neat features, like floating point pixel data, and lossless conversion from JPEG (and according to Wikipedia [1] back to JPEG, but I'm guessing that only applies to images that went JPEG -> JPEG XL -> JPEG).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Photographic_Experts_Gro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Photographic_Experts_Group#JPEG_XL)

<comment><USER3> You can think of them all as JPEG NB.. 'no browser support' ;)

<comment><USER4> The browser scene is very different these days. Browsers are evergreen or yearly updated.

So are creation tools such as Adobe's.

<comment><USER5> JPEG XR is only supported by IE (since version 2011) and Edge before the switch to Blink/Chromium. Webp is supported by everyone except Safari and IE, but Safari and mobile Safari have about 15-20% combined market share.

New formats are basically only relevant if they get blessed by Google/Chrome, and even then you often need fallbacks for a long time.

<comment><USER4> The thing that held us back before was legacy tools and browsers. Not anymore.

If we can agree on a standard (hard, I know) we can star using it pretty quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Patent encumbered?

<comment><USER7> Yes, there is at least one third party patent license administrator for JPEG- XT:

[https://www.sisvel.com/licensing-programs/digital-video- disp...](https://www.sisvel.com/licensing-programs/digital-video-display- technology/jpeg-xt/patent-owners)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You may want to append (2015) to that title.

See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_XT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_XT)

</comment><comment><USER9> Jpeg XS Max</comment>


The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-03-hipster-effect-anti-conformists.html <comment><USER2> "You are all individuals"

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ)</comment>


The New York Times Tops 5M Subscriptions as Ads Decline - ajay-d https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/business/new-york-times-earning.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is good news. THere's no doubt that advertising has a negative effect on the journalism side of a newspaper.

</comment><comment><USER2> I really love the nytimes but their use of google recaptcha is really boring. Guess I'll unsubscribe soon :(</comment>


Christmas gift for someone you hate: Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/05/christmas-gift-for-someone-you-hate-windows-8/

<comment><USER2> >> One would think therefore that it would be possible to use traditional applications in the left-hand two-thirds of the screen while running a tablet environment on the right-hand one-third of the screen.

This is actually supported with the Snap functionality where you can have the full desktop on two-thirds of the screen and Metro apps on the left or right. See: <http://cdn.nirmaltv.com/images/Windows-8-snap.png>

</comment><comment><USER2> To be fair, it is not that bad. You just have to know what you are buying.</comment>


Bringing Tizen to Raspberry PI 2 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.s-osg.org/bringing-tizen-to-a-raspberry-pi-2-near-you/ <comment><USER2> This should have "(2015)" in the title, as it's not exactly recent. ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> No thanks. Less corporate Android. More freedom

\- Recently? Play Store android phones started allowing apps to run ads with your typical virus style "Hey I see you CPU is "Lagging" click to fix Pop- downs.

\- My new Samsung phone was an expensive pocket watch / alarm clock. Now it wants me to be a puppet. Like everyone else I thought paying lots of money for something meant it had positive value.

\- I get it, I fell for it. Jokes on me - I'm an idiot - something to do with my identity and consumerism.

\- I see people online do silly things like port Windows onto their Chromebook (Shed tear). "Look at all these new features!" they proclaim in joy. They don't seem to realize they were allowed that freedom through free software / hardware. It's always something. Video games, convenience, simplicity.

\- I'm not ignorant of why these things appear appealing - I wasted much of my life over what I thought was time saving.

\- It's like getting granted political asylum and running into the first jail just to be extra sure you're safe.

TL:DR

I tried getting a newer laptop to run Windows a year or so ago believing that like my desktop I could choose to uninstall the Windows and replace it. It was a 64 bit processor running 32 bit windows. 32 bit bootloader. Christ. Then reinstalling Windows to sell it. Oh now the mouse and keyboard doesn't work because the drivers were packaged separately and the repair partition (10gb of the 32gb emmc) is only accessible by a repair specialist.

So when these corps come along with "look at what we've "philanthropically" contributed to your cheap raspberry pi I'm gonna go ahead and steer towards a future without all the B.S.

I'd love to hear more about how these corps are symbiotic for a better technical future (partial sarcasm).

<comment><USER4> Your tldr is too long. Tizen isn't android btw.</comment></comment>


Illegal downloaders 'spend the most on music', says poll - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/illegal-downloaders-spend-the-most-on-music-says-poll-1812776.html <comment><USER2> For me this poll makes far too many assumptions in it's conclusion.

Mostly because only 1000 people are interviewed (hardly a decent sample).

Plus there is no data about how much music the individuals listen too etc. The other, equally valid, explanation is that people who spend more on music also pirate.

The key problem with that last statement is that people are going to use this as evidence piracy is good for music revenues; when actually the "pirates" noted in the poll could well spend that amount anyway - and being a pirate is an incidental part of their interest in music (and in fact some might spend MORE if they couldn't pirate).

The poll could very well be correct; but there is just not enough evidence gathered by it to make a valid conclusion.</comment>


Haystack - Search for Django - <AUTHOR> http://haystacksearch.org/

<comment><USER2> Good docuentation, beautiful website, and search that is very much inspirsed by Django's ORM. Certainly the best option out there for search.

It currently support Solr really well, and Whoosh (Pure Python) decently.

<comment><USER3> Very cool... Xapian, Sphinx and Hyper Estraier support should be coming soon: <http://haystacksearch.org/docs/backend_support.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not so sure about Sphinx support coming anytime soon: [http://github.com/toastdriven/django- haystack/issues/labels/...](http://github.com/toastdriven/django- haystack/issues/labels/feature#issue/31)

From my experience using Sphinx, it would be a non-trivial task to make it work with Haystack. There's the django-sphinx project which is what I currently use, but I remember getting started with it was kind of a pain. It's speed is really nice though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started coding up a site using this (yesterday, actually) and it's very easy. Whoosh support is cool, although you have to use a forked version that reverts a couple changes. One thing that bothers me is that you have to label the template files for search results as *.txt for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks promising</comment>


About normalize.css: a modern, HTML5-ready alternative to CSS resets - <AUTHOR> http://nicolasgallagher.com/about-normalize-css/

<comment><USER2> One of the big things I like about CSS resets is it forces me to think about every design decision rather than just going with the 'sensible' browser defaults.

I guess with discipline I can train myself to always think about things like the rhythm created by font-size and margins on headers, but I've not experienced the downsides of a full reset yet.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Maybe I'm missing the point, but I loathe default stylings. Ugly grey buttons and annoying blue html links normalized across browsers are still ugly grey buttons and annoying blue html links.

<comment><USER4> The point of normalize, at least how I use it and understand it, is if you wanted to change a default style you just go into the normalize.css file and change the style of links, or buttons in there, and be assured they work cross browser.

As apposed to having to to declare a reset, and then re-declaring everything again.

He says this in the article too: "Approach 1: use normalize.css as a starting point for your own project's base CSS, customising the values to match the design's requirements."

The point of normalize is not to keep links blue, and buttons gray. They find the rendering discrepancies between browsers, fix them, and make it easy for you to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use it indirectly (via Twitter Bootstrap) and I have no complaints.

I found it a bit curious though that they don't dogfood it on their Github page (<http://necolas.github.com/normalize.css/>), but I guess that's not a huge deal or anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I found it a bit curious though that they don't dogfood it on their Github > page

I do! But it's using and customising only the parts that are needed (...and a few lines of CSS are a bit old and out-of-date).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps I am missing something here. I looked at the demo page in FF10, Chrome17, and IE 8, and I see different spacing in rendering across those platforms (mostly in IE8, but FF10 and Chrome17 are not the same either)

<http://i.imgur.com/SMwHD.png>

<comment><USER7> Not just spacing. The font size seems consistently slightly larger. Have you checked the browser zoom level is 100%?

<comment><USER6> Ah. that was it. I had IE set to 110%

I have reset IE to 100%, and retaken the screen cap. I still see differences. take a look:

<http://i.imgur.com/3ZZ6T.png>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have been using normalize for the past few months in all of my new projects and I can attest to its superiority over the standard resets. Great work, as ever, necolas.

</comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't this mean that you have to address the specifics of each browser that might use your site though?

So if Konqueror 3.42 [made up version] has a bug giving a default of double the normal padding on h1 then I have to specifically check that this is addressed by the attempted normalization.

>" _Normalize.css is an alternative to CSS resets. The project is the product of 100′s of hours of extensive research by @necolas and @jon_neal on the differences between default browser styles._ "

Makes me think that I'm going to need to update every site using this with every new browser version that has a pixel difference in it's default style; a situation that a reset just works on.

Of course resets are subject to browser bugs too but it seems that they are more robust and more likely to just work ...?

<comment><USER10> Best solution would be to reset default styles and only then normalize them across browsers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Normalize.css is modular

That is a strong claim given that the "modularisation" is realised adding banner comments in the CSS. I think it would had been better to have separate @import'ed files. Those worried about performance could use minificators while other, like me, could just use the parts they are interested in, in my case

        @import 'normalize.css/html5-fixes.css'
        @import 'normalize.css/html5-defaults.css'

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me or is hosting a single css file on a git repository a little silly? Not like one would continually check out the latest version.

That said, a reset file is always a good idea, and this is a nice evolution thereof.

<comment><USER13> > Not like one would continually check out the latest version.

Why not? It's being updated regularly: <https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css/commits/master>

<comment><USER12> Because it's a reset file... meaning the moment you change it the changes will cascade into your css.

The last thing I would want is the behaviour of my css changing periodically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This looks really nice. The only thing I didn't like is the proportional font for input fields - it makes it hard to synchronize size and maxlength.

</comment><comment><USER15> I just tried out normalize in a project I'm working on - so far, everything is great. Thanks for the hard work, Necolas!

</comment><comment><USER16> Any plans to provide a version made available by a CDN like jQuery ?</comment>


Amazon to acquire Comixology - <AUTHOR> http://comixology.tumblr.com/post/82316305607/amazon-com-to-acquire-comixology

<comment><USER2> I've used Comixology and Marvel Unlimited before. Marvel Unlimited is a travesty on Android tablets, which is really unfortunate, because a subscription service like that is probably the only way I will consistently read comics.

Comixology's app is certainly better, but it's tough to shell out the money for something I could be done reading 5-10 minutes later. It'd be nice if they could get together a subscription service like Netflix, but for the smaller publishing houses like Image, since DC and Marvel will obviously go their own way.

<comment><USER3> I'm an independent comics creator who does graphic novels that take a while to read, not single issues. I'm also someone who spent all day Thursday trying to get my GN into a .mobi, without much success: [https://vine.co/v/M5M3lLEwz6E](https://vine.co/v/M5M3lLEwz6E)

I am really happy about this. Because perhaps it will mean I will soon be able to just upload a .pdf of my comic to Amazon and not worry about anything beyond how much to charge for it.

<comment><USER4> Publishing on Amazon is currently quite horrible, so I am sorry to say that if you use history as a guide, then you are in bad luck. For example, current publishers get less money if they use bigger data. The result is blurry pictures on hi-res screens. Awful policy.

<comment><USER5> I've not had a problem with the comics we've gotten from Amazon. If anything, the reader on the Kindle Fire HDX takes a little getting used to because you need to click to zoom to read a good bit of it. I've tried reading them on my laptop but can't get into it; I can't read books on a horizontal screen. Things will be much better with electronic paper, so it will be like a comic book again. Sure, I could buy an actual comic book, but what fun is that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's surprising that Marvel and DC didn't purchase Comixology to prevent this from happening. We've seen what Amazon did to book publishers, I don't see any reason to believe they won't do the same to comic book publishers.

On the other hand, perhaps lower pricing/subscription services is just what the comic book industry needs to get more people reading comics.

<comment><USER7> That's pretty much my guess, Marvel & DC might be hoping there is growth potential.

<comment><USER6> But surely they would want to be the ones in control of this?

<comment><USER8> The price of this might be the destruction of comic book stores. It's often hard for companies to bypass retailers, because the retailers will get mad at them, and the retailers are the majority of their (direct) customers.

This way, Amazon does Marvel/DCs dirty work, but Marvel/DC still gets paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The people who are probably shitting right now are the local comic shops and Diamond Distributors.

Comixology, whether due to temperament or just due to size and leverage, was playing fairly nice with the existing comics ecosystem. Now, they're owned by a middleman that makes Diamond look positively cute by comparison, and one with a fairly explicit goal of crushing all local shops of all types.

<comment><USER10> I came here to say just this. I wonder how long the cute distinction Comixology makes by splitting the digital and comic-shop sides of their website will last. There's also no reason Amazon doesn't just put Diamond out of business by putting one team on making a Previews-like ordering system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As long as their content doesn't become Kindle Fire exclusive, I don't mind this change.

<comment><USER12> I agree. It's getting weird how many Kindle Fire exclusives applications are out there with no Android equivalents. UK newspapers come to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The biggest aspect to consider here is that Amazon already sells digital comics that are usable on Kindles and in Kindle apps. I don't imagine that feature going away, in the place of Amazon promoting the use a separate Comixology app.

Which makes me inclined to believe that Comixology will be phased out, and its features incorporated into the Kindle comics features.

<comment><USER14> Why not the other direction? I think Comixology has a bigger backing, so they could merge their stuff to Comixology. This might be similar to how they run IMDB or Zappos.

<comment><USER15> I downloaded the Comixology app just to try. And I don't think the Comixology way of thinking for their app works for non american comics. Japanese comics can't be viewed bubble by bubble, that would be just a horrible experience, and there doesn't seem to be two-pages side by side display handling, or right to left page order option either. The Kindle handles this kind of things gracefully.

BTW they really should have something free in their store or directly in the app, even an illustrated guide of how to use the app, just to give an idea of the experience. No one asks their users to buy 5~10$ content just to see if the app is comfortable to use.

<comment><USER16> [https://www.comixology.com/free-comics](https://www.comixology.com/free- comics)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This may be a weird reason to not be happy with this, but I pay for my subscriptions and purchases on Comixology with PayPal, and I'm pretty certain that will go away pretty soon now.

I'd love to think that this will stay the same, but I see lots of changes happening from this, most not so great.

<comment><USER18> Zappos has been owned by Amazon for years now, and they still accept Paypal.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the reminder. You're right.

Well, if anything then, this could signal that 'owning my digital content that's really owned/held by Comixology' means it'll be around longer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is amazing that this company succeeded. One would have expected that the comic book store owners would have effectively resisted but DC wanted something in place for the iPad launch and it just started the ball rolling down hill.

Haven't been to a comic book store since the Android app came out.

<comment><USER20> I think you are misunderstanding that most Comic Book Store Owners are also fans, and are always eager to get the most ways to access content out there. Also, Comixology (currently at least) has their Comics Retailer platform (ie [https://isotope.comicretailer.com/](https://isotope.comicretailer.com/) for my shop in SF, Isotope) that allows these shops to make some (admittedly less) money per issue with no inventory, no pre-ordering and no liability for unsold comics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If they add the Comixology library to Prime subscribers, I would pay double!

<comment><USER22> I would go for adding "1 issue of your choice per week" as part of prime (a bit like the kindle lending library) - this would work great for occasional readers, and I could see this generating significant sales for people who binge-read

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if this opens up the possibility of a Comixology API similar to IMDB.

My side project Longboxed.com could really benefit from a better datafeed.

<comment><USER20> Longboxed seems pretty neat! Where are you currently pulling that data from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm using a laptop. Is there a significant difference in the reading experience between their "immersive and cinematic" one and just looking at, e.g., Questionable Content on Firefox?

(I ask because I was going to try reading one of their free comics and they want me to "register" with email and date of birth and password and oh give it a rest for pete's sake...)

</comment><comment><USER25> Amazon seems to be really good at acquisitions, sort of like 1990s Cisco, although in an entirely different way (Cisco integrated well; Amazon leaves them alone, but provides services).

I'm much happier to see Amazon buy a company for product, as I then have even more confidence it will continue to operate, than virtually any other acquirer.

<comment><USER7> In a past life I worked for a company that was acquired by Amazon. It was like what HBO talks about, how cable companies deal with infrastructure & advertising & distribution, letting HBO focus on making TV- As we were taken into the fold, exactly that sort of thing began to happen for us, as the mother ship shouldered infrastructure burdens & so forth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe this was a defensive move by Amazon as eBay was partnering with Comixology: [http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/ebay-pushes-into- curating-a...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/ebay-pushes-into-curating-and- selling-digital-goods-launches-dedicated-marketplace-for-digital-comics/)

</comment><comment><USER27> On a similar note, I'd love it if there was some kind of media server for documents, pdfs, cbz, cbr files etc. that has an android/ios app and web app (like plex) to stream to.

Anybody, know of anything like this?

<comment><USER28> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPDS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPDS)

<comment><USER29> FBReader's Android version lets you add a local ODPS server manually or scan you local network for one. Calibre a fantastic ebook collection manager/reader/converter/sync lets you run a server.

<comment><USER28> I've been using FBReader since PalmOS. I don't use a cbz reader for anything, so I don't know if there is a ODPS client that can read .cbz files (but ODPS is really straightforward, so if there is an OSS cbz reader it would be easy to add).

<comment><USER29> I think Moon+ Reader(closed source ads/pro version ebook/comic book reader) supports ODPS and cbr/cbz files.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


$12 Computer: Playpower Wants to Save the World 8 Bits at a Time - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/03/12-computers-ba.html <comment><USER2> So India has been making $12 computers all along.

I'm envisaging a billion smart, dedicated but poor programmers creating a new software eco-system... and the 6502 being improved til it disrupts our bloated CPU's and software stack. Slipstreaming on a blazed trail, rates of improvement would be more rapid than Moore's Law (though for large scale, it would have to wait for the relevant patents to expire).</comment>


Opioid Distributors Propose $10B to End State Claims - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-06/opioid-distributors-propose-10-billion-to-end-state-lawsuits <comment><AUTHOR> This is really fascinating, a settlement was always in the cards but I think many investors believed it would be significantly below this (per Axios [https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios- markets-39c89ee1-54b...](https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios- markets-39c89ee1-54ba-47d3-90e0-8de989606c88.html?chunk=1&utm_term=twsocialshare#story1))</comment>


Ask HN: How many of you are skimmers? - <AUTHOR> I am sure that most of you read articles that you are interested in, the full article. You spend the 5-20 minutes it might take reading an in-depth article if you are interested in it, but for other articles, with curious headlines, or with articles that are just too long to read, do you end up just skimming them?
This is not to say that one article is more important over the other, but just that there are only 24 hours in a day and you cannot read them all; so skimming seems to be a viable option.
There are times where I do see a website with a good article, but honestly, I wish they would have a summarized version of the article they wrote.
This led me to create a feature on my own website at http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com called Quick Glimpse.
I talk about why more blogs should summarize their articles here: http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/summarize-blog
Looking off to the left of that article, you can see an example of Quick Glimpse.
I take the article, chop it up into about 3 to 5 short sentences which are presented as bullet points.
There are advantages and disadvantages for doing this. I know people spend less time on the website, but more people actually return back to the website to read other articles and are more likely to actually share the article on social media.
But I am curious why more bloggers aren't catching on to help people "skim" blog posts.  Is the mentality: "I took the time to write this, you can take the time to read it"? If Google data is correct and a person spends an average of 2 minutes on a web page, I would rather make those 2 minutes count and give the person all they need in a summary.
What are your thoughts for providing people with a summary of your blog post? And if you are a skimmer, what exactly are you looking for when you skim an article? Do you get anything out of the article when skimming? <comment><USER2> I like it. its like the sidebar on the front page of the wall street journal. And on your site I would rather read those little summaries instead of what you put under the headline on the main page

I like all my information bite sized. and when i click to the main article i want the article short too.....and full of facts. I could read

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to know there are others... nothing wrong with long articles, but a little helpful summary would be nice!

I've yet to come across very many websites that do this, but I figured I'd offer something unique and different.

Like I said, I'd rather you be on the page for 2 minutes, then leave, move on with your life, than not at all.

<comment><USER2> This may or may not be helpful but I had an idea a couple years ago that was basically cliff notes for news. The program would read articles and parse the facts using keywords like "did,was,is, etc" which would by itself create a summary. Let me know if you want to work on that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I look at an article and decide how much to skim or not to skim and maybe I read part of it in depth and skim other parts and then read more of it closely.

Summaries don't fit my use case and don't satisfy my interest and are not as enjoyable to read...I read because I enjoy it.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input brudgers. You must be selective though. I'm always curious to read every article, but I click based on headlines and the first two paragraphs usually to decide: Should I continue?

I know its not always good to judge an article like that.. I remember reading a book as a teenager and it took like 5 chapters just to start becoming interesting, and it was one of the best books I have ever read, one that stuck with me throughout my adulthood. So I know it is not the best thing to do, but trying to read word in an article is just not something I can do every day. So I try to narrow down the ones I want to read. Just saying it'd be more helpful if they did have a summary with a few lines explaining or paraphrasing the entire article.

<comment><USER3> I gave up on trying to read everything I want to read. I read what I read and don't read what I don't and maybe bookmark a dozen things to come back and read a year and maybe read half of those and only when I get back to them in a few hours.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Polyhedra Viewer - <AUTHOR> https://polyhedra.tessera.li <comment><AUTHOR> Polyhedra Viewer: app to explore the relationships and transformations between various convex polyhedra.

This has been a passion project of mine for the last six months (with different versions going back further!) It's partially inspired by George W Hart's virtual polyhedra ([http://www.georgehart.com/virtual- polyhedra/vp.html](http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/vp.html)) I wanted to make something accessible and beautiful, since a lot of the resources that already exist aren't very friendly to people not already obsessed with polyhedra.

I'm still (sort of) working on it, so suggestions and comments are welcome!

<comment><USER2> I immediately tried to construct my favorite obscure polyhedron (the rhombic dodecahedron) and found I simply could not take the dual of the cuboctahedron! :P

That aside, this is a really fantastic little toy here - I'd never really understood the relationships between all these shapes before, or exactly what some of these operations _were_ , geometrically speaking.

<comment><USER3> > favorite obscure polyhedron (the rhombic dodecahedron)

Obscure? Come on! The rhombic dodecahedron is the Voronoi cell of the FCC lattice, making it (arguably) the most natural 3-dimensional analog of the hexagon. It shows up all over the place!

You might enjoy these rhombic dodecahedral dice [https://www.mathartfun.com/thedicelab.com/SpaceFillingDice.h...](https://www.mathartfun.com/thedicelab.com/SpaceFillingDice.html)

<comment><USER2> It's "obscure" to me (and also my favorite) because I had never even _heard_ of it before I tried to find out what the most natural 3-dimensional analog of the hexagon was. :)

<comment><USER3> Also see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_conjecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_conjecture)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent stuff!! It'd be great if you could flatten the shapes to printable A4 paper so kids can cut and build real models (and paint them, etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! Nets are totally in the feature pipeline. Until then, check this out: [https://www.korthalsaltes.com/](https://www.korthalsaltes.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is fantastic, I love it! I've been looking for something like this.

Your definition of "uniform" doesn't look quite right: It's not enough for the symmetry group to be vertex transitive, you also have to require that the faces be regular polygons (see the wikipedia page on isogonal solids for examples of vertex-transitive solids which don't have regular faces). Also, "vertex-transitive" means that for any pair of vertices, there is a rotation or reflection symmetry of the solid which sends the first vertex to the second -- this is not equivalent to the definition you give, for example, the pentagonal cupola is not vertex-transitive but it does seem to satisfy your definition. The standard definition of "uniform" for higher dimensions is recursive: A convex polytope is called uniform if its facets are uniform and its symmetry group (including reflections) is vertex-transitive; a 2-dimensional polytope is called uniform if it is regular (i.e., is a regular polygon). So, in three dimensions, a convex polyhedron is called uniform if it has regular faces and its symmetry group is vertex-transitive.

<comment><AUTHOR> good catch! I forgot to put the "regular faces" part because everything in the app so far is regular faced. I was trying to make a definition of "vertex transitive" that's intelligible for someone without a math background but I obviously have a bit to go! I'll update the text based on your comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonderful.

1\. Do you plan an open source licence for any of the underlying code?

2\. Is the construction parametric or is it based on a large catalogue of the various polyhedra and associated constructions?

3\. Any plans to allow stacking of operations? First thing I tried was to apply multiple truncates but it's only a toggle switch. But then your code knows when an operation results in another named polyhedra so I'm guessing you might be using a catalogue of relationships rather than geometrically truncating a mesh representation.

4\. This is crying out for a WebVR mode...

I've been playing with a combination of the Wythoff Construction and Conway Operators to do something similar in Unity: [https://github.com/Ixxy-Open- Source/wythoff-polyhedra](https://github.com/Ixxy-Open-Source/wythoff- polyhedra) but I haven't had time to wrap it in a nice UI

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. The source code is here: [https://github.com/tesseralis/polyhedra- viewer](https://github.com/tesseralis/polyhedra-viewer), under the MIT license. 2\. Both! I do have a catalog of the polyhedra (adapted from [http://www.georgehart.com/virtual- polyhedra/vp.html](http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/vp.html)). Some of the operations, like truncation, are done parametrically, but others, like expansion, I "cheated" and relied on knowing what the result is b/c I was just too lazy to figure out the math. 3\. I don't think so. The primary focus is the relationships between the regular faced polyhedra, so only the operations that keep you within this particular set. Unfortunately you can only truncate something once before the faces become non-regular. 4\. I know right??? First I need to figure out how to VR... _shrug_

Yeah, generic Wythoff and Conway operators are wild... I'm still not sure I fully understand them. Maybe your thing can help me eventually ^^

<comment><USER6> > Maybe your thing can help me eventually

Maybe my thing can help _me_ eventually! Most of the clever code is from elsewhere and I need to brush up on some fundamental maths to really understand it. I've ended up with two different mesh representations which I convert between (one for the base Wythoff stuff and the other for applying Conway operators). Ideally I'd rewrite one of the other to get rid of this.

You do start to get awesome results by just fiddling with different chains of operators so I'd love to wrap that part in a nice UI and release it as a toy. It is of course very easy to end up with way too many polygons as most operators double the count at the very least.

I'm very jealous of some aspects of your app. I might need to borrow some ideas... :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Borrow away! Which parts are you thinking of, if I may ask?

<comment><USER6> 1\. The UI for choosing which face type to perform some operators on. I had a numeric input field which is fairly unfriendly in hindsight.

2\. I didn't have twist, elongate or several of your other operations. They won't always make sense as general operations but it's given me some ideas.

3\. Lots of little UI touches. I was fumbling around with various UI ideas and you've given me a better sense of direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The shapes remind me of chemistry, molecules, enzymes, proteins, viruses.

I would add 1 thing only: physics to the interactions, so the shape will keep spinning after I swipe across it.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a treat. It's like a well-produced color mathematical atlas come to life.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great work!

Have you seen this one? [https://levskaya.github.io/polyhedronisme/](https://levskaya.github.io/polyhedronisme/)

Also, you have probably seen Wenninger's books, but if not those are great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bookmarked! (so that's what propel actually means...) I don't know how I missed it in my initial search for polyhedron resources.

Of course I know Wenniger's books! Though I haven't had the chance to actually read them yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wonderful resource. Nice to see X3D used 'in the wild' also.

</comment><comment><USER10> Really neat!

2 features which might cool: stellation and .obj export

Iirc these things apply to 2d tilings also? I remember trying to do some esher-esque drawings using such tilings a bunch of years back.

<comment><AUTHOR> Already ahead of you! You can see the .obj download links at in the Info tab (e.g. polyhedra.tessera.li/tetrahedron/info)

And yeah, the same operators can be used on 2d tilings ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_polyhedron_notation#Oth...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_polyhedron_notation#Other_surfaces))

<comment><USER10> Perfect!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How would I export these shapes for use in threejs or other web based 3d display?

Can they be exported as gltf format?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have gltf, but you can download the .obj files (e.g. at polyhedra.tessera.li/tetrahedron/info), which three.js can read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is extremely informative and mesmerizing!</comment>


I Can't Breathe - <AUTHOR> https://blog.citigroup.com/2020/05/i-cant-breathe/ <comment><USER2> Pretty bold of Citi to publish something like this. I wish more companies had the balls to do something like this... Not just some "Yay equality!!" Tweet, but a real and specific stance. Kudos.

<comment><USER3> IDK, I'm a little more skeptical of this post. It seems more posturing than actually effecting change. CFOs have other means of doing that, in better ways than a simple blog post. This is no different than the celebrity cause du jour tweet except that it's coming from a business leader rather than some actor/actress/pop star. Let's see this CFO use their connections and influence to make things better in real ways.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Actions speak louder than words. This (and many other company statements like this) are mostly empty nice feel good words, but merely that. Just like what a populist or demagogue would say/do to appear favorably in the eyes of others...

IMO donating to an organization seems weak. It's like outsourcing the problem to someone else, and thinking your helping them because you're giving them money. If you really want to help, get your hands dirty, and take matters into your own hands...

<comment><USER5> Strongly disagree with this sentiment. Not everyone has the time, skills, or even the "cred" to get their hands dirty.

Giving money to good causes is never weak. It is an extraordinarily effective tool for those of us who want to help.

An effective legal advocacy or lobby group is a force multiplier - they're hands down the best "bang for your buck" in this situation.

By contrast, me spending a day working with inner city youth or building Habitat for Humanity is laudable or protesting in the streets is at best effective on a much smaller scale.

And secondly, this message is clearly aimed squarely at other well to do concerned citizens like him who are looking for ways to help.

He is effectively vetting these organizations as "acceptable by the CitiGroup C suite." As an example, I forwarded this to my parents who would never "get their hands dirty" but also are open to donating to good causes.

This will reach them in a way no celebrity tweet or protest sign possibly could.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How many people did they foreclose upon during the mortgage crisis? How many people have they extracted usurious amounts of interest from? How many people have they lured into debt and deceitful loans?

This is a large corporation with as much a hand in perpetuating systemic inequality as any other large corporation. Moreso because it exists in the financial sector. Calling out inequality and donating funds generated from parasitic practices is not enough. Let's talk about debt forgiveness, defunding the carceral state and dismantling other structures of oppression.

<comment><USER7> That was 12 years ago. Perhaps they have learned from it?

(I don't believe they have learned anything, but this tiny chink in the armor suggests that at least I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this blog post.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When it comes to speaking for racial justice and equality for LGBTQ, private corporations have been much more on the side of the angels than the government.

The same government that wants to shut down Twitter.

<comment><USER9> You mean the same corporations that got bailed out by the us tax payer, had billions of dollars of fines, and should have executives in prison for misconduct. Yeah they are the ones we should look up to /s

<comment><USER8> You'll have to excuse me if I'm a lot less concerned about white collar crime than I am about a government that systematically targets people who look like me.

But speaking of which, the government is also run by a President who actually quoted a segregationist governor about how to deal with protestors.

As far as crimes, he also was fined for both running a fake charity and a fake "university" and members of Congress basically got away with insider trading pre-Covid.

But your statement kind of demonstrates the problem. Unarmed Black people are getting killed by police and it getting covered up by corrupt government. When I have to worry about my son who has grown up all of his life in the burbs being seen as a threat because he is a big Black guy living in a predominantly White city, I really don't give a damn about a corrupt CEO compared to a corrupt justice system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This investigation will likely end in nothing.

This will be delayed until news coverage stop, then everyone can continue their life business as usual.

The cops that choked Eric Gardner to death are all free right now.

<comment><USER11>
      The cops that choked Eric Gardner to death are all free right now.

Despite Loretta Lynch hand-picking the DOJ investigating agents, she declined to pursue civil rights charges. (Remember, that was the mechanism used by GHW Bush's DOJ to successfully prosecute Powell and Koon in the Rodney King beating after the Simi Valley jury acquittal.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Despite the progress the United States has made, Black Americans are too often denied basic privileges that others take for granted. I am not talking about the privileges of wealth, education or job opportunities. I'm talking about fundamental human and civil rights and the dignity and respect that comes with them. I'm talking about something as mundane as going for a jog."

What progress?

This song was written in 1966. It could have been written this morning:

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

We have made technological progress, which has brought it's own benefits, but that may be more in the form of keeping us busy / distracted; pointing our genetically evolved anger and biases towards the Internet rather than the real world.

But progress within humanity itself?

There can't be progress if there are no consequences, or if the consequences are escaped too frequently, or if the blame is laid upon the symptoms and not the cause: Rioting and looting is anti-social and illegal, yes, but property destruction isn't the same ball park as murder. Focus on the cause, and the symptoms disappear.

But then it's impossible to provide any absolute answer. There's overwhelming beauty in humanity. The good ones are forgiving, and the bad ones will take advantage, and this takes us into game theory. The only way the game changes is if the rules are changed to have more / worse consequences for the bad actors; better systems to ensure the enforcement of these consequences.

Bad elements of humanity will persist despite all this; we'll be colonising Mars in parallel with children being brought up to hate anything unfamiliar, female circumcision will still be law in some countries, and there will still governments that censor and censure even minor dissent, flat-earthers, anti- vaxxers, holocaust deniers.

I don't know if the US is making progress in race relations. That song from 1966 says a resounding no. I don't know if the political will exists within those with the political power to change things. US politics (only because that's the current example) is like my parents' fashion sense: stuck in their favourite era and showing no signs of even the consideration of modernising.

I don't know the answer, and it's maddening and depressing. But it's ignorable, for me, and therein lies the cause of the lack of political will: the symptoms aren't bad enough warrant the cost of seeing the doctor. School shootings once a month aren't bad enough to change gun laws; one dead black man doesn't have anywhere near the political capital of a dozen dead children.

For there to be change, the symptoms have to be more extreme, and they have to persist. History says so.

Technologically, this is 2020. Sociologically this might as well be 1966.

<comment><USER8> _What progress?_

Seeing that my parents grew up in the segregated south where racism was the law - ie Jim Crow - I wouldn't say there is no progress. Also redlining was the law.

While the criminal justice system is just as corrupt as it ever was. It isn't getting worse - it's getting filmed.

 _Technologically, this is 2020. Sociologically this might as well be 1966._

Did you or your parents grow up in the 60s? Have they told you what life was like then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I admit, I was cringing when I saw the Citi logo at first thinking they would somehow pivot this into some marketing ploy.

Good on Citi for taking a firm stand and calling on some organizations people can donate to, which I personally hadn't heard of until I read the post.

</comment><comment><USER14> Police stood by and watch someone presumably getting murdered. Aside from also heart condition present, society can't tolerate bullying any longer. Grow some spine, even if they break you.

</comment><comment><USER15> Some information on the pressures driving statements like these, beyond the writer's personal impetus: [https://www.corp- research.org/citigroup](https://www.corp-research.org/citigroup)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish he'd gone a little further in condemning the rioting. It would have been the courageous thing to do.

The rioting is a mistake. It will not change hearts and minds. It will not undo the problems endemic to police forces. In fact, it may very well exacerbate them.

The problematic archetype is the bigoted cop who's drunk with power and behaves more like an animal operating on instinct than a thinking human. These people, in the collective, are irrational, aggressive, and reactionary. They also hide behind authority and a convenient veneer in the "rule of law". We also are now seeing that there may be many of more of them (and many more enablers of them still) than we thought.

And it is exactly these people who will feel vindicated and emboldened in the face of the rioting currently underway. If we're not careful, it may also give them a pretext to resort to even more horrible tactics in the future. Increased surveillance of political organizers and low-income neighborhoods, more military weaponry at their disposal, laxer guidelines around 'use of force'.

The current trajectory is not the way. We need to use the system of governance we have at our disposal to try and fix this. It's the harder but also only truly effective means of recourse society has at its disposal.

<comment><USER17> From reports across the country, it's definitely unclear who is responsible for most of the rioting. Some people are clearly outsiders, provocateurs. In other places, it's clear that the cops are the ones escalating and provoking. There's a fair bit of evidence that protest organizers worked hard to stop rioting.

Moreover, I think focusing too much on the property destruction is missing the point. As MLK says, "Riot is the language of the unheard." White people have had a couple hundred years to "use the system of governance" to fix this. We haven't.

I get why you'd want to call for patience, for peaceful pursuit through the law and courts. But you should read "A Call for Unity", an open letter 8 pastors wrote to MLK in 1963:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20181229055408/https://moodle.ti...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181229055408/https://moodle.tiu.edu/pluginfile.php/57183/mod_resource/content/1/StatementAndResponseKingBirmingham1.pdf)

his response to this is the famous Letter From Birmingham Jail: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail)

Like you, the white pastors wanted patience, wanted people to trust the system to eventually provide justice. MLK eloquently explained why that was wrong. And little in the nearly 60 years since makes the case any more persuasive.

<comment><USER16> I never said violent revolution isn't a possibly effective means of enacting political change. History in fact demonstrates that quite vividly.

But violent revolution is also not, in the aggregate, a net benefit in the immediate term. Not even for black people. Believing otherwise represents a failure to anticipate 2nd/3rd order consequences and beyond. In the best case, you might experience a lot of suffering today to benefit people in the far future. I don't think we'll see that best case play out with the current rioting. We've been here before, many times (e.g. Rodney King). It doesn't work.

Take a look at Hong Kong. They got rid of Carrie Lam and just a few days ago lost their special trading status with the United States. Stay tuned for more consequences.

The flaw in MLK's logic and the reason that black people still encounter systemic mistreatment 60 years later is that it fails to account for economic conditions (where do stereotypes come from? vivid, sticky ideas that trigger fear, like violent crime; where does violent crime come from? economic disenfranchisment) and the glacial pace of cultural change (relatedly, the 'hearts and minds problem'; sometimes you just need to wait for enough bigots to be better educated, achieve empathy by actually knowing black people personally, or die out).

<comment><USER18> When you have the police state escalating the violence against you, you either get violent in return or you get the knee to your neck.

The reason why things have gotten violent is as I mentioned in a prior post is self-defense. People don't trust the police at all, and why should they? We've seen them attack journalists multiple times, we've seen them assault people who were protesting peacefully and increasingly it looks like they're employing agent provocateurs to give themselves a reason to get violent. Who is going to hold them accountable when the system refuses to hold them accountable?

<comment><USER16> I'd be careful to generalize from the almost certainly distorted view you have of the "facts on the ground". Also keep in mind the irony of weaponizing sweeping generalizations against a particular group of people.

You should naturally expect some amount of badness in almost any sample of humans, including the police. It might also help to empathize with a cop on the ground in this situation when police stations have literally been blown up.

<comment><USER8> Why in the hell should I "empathize" with a police department that tried to cover it up until video was shown?

 _You should naturally expect some amount of badness in almost any sample of humans, including the police._

And the "badness" seems to only affect people who look like me...

But as Chris Rock said...

 _Well, it's not most cops. It's just a few bad apples. It's just a few bad apples." Bad apple? That's a lovely name for murderer. That almost sounds nice. I've had a bad apple. It was tart, but it didn't choke me out. Here's the thing....But some jobs can't have bad apples. Some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like … pilots. Ya know, American Airlines can't be like, "Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us."_</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Also Out at Twitter: Engineering Head Roetter (and More to Come) - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2016/01/24/also-out-at-twitter-engineering-head-roetter-and-more/ <comment><USER3> I think Twitter needs to learn to be okay with its current size, or perhaps even smaller. The core idea is very compelling - a curated feed of short, simple content. The nonsense Twitter has added lately substantially detracts from its core values, and it feels like desperate pleas for unnecessary growth to somehow support the massive payroll they convinced themselves to take on. The Silicon Valley obsession with endless growth is harmful sometimes.

<comment><USER4> While I see this as true, man does it suck to be an employee who was hoping for stock options to be worth anything. Especially for those who became Twitter employees via an acquisition, since I imagine a big part of their compensation from that event was stock.

<comment><USER5> Work for a large well know established company making a great salary and tangible RSUs or work for one of the other 99% of startups that pay under market and whose options will never be worth $0.01. Yeah, sucks to be an employee at Twitter. :-/

<comment><USER4> I guess? I have friends who worked for a company acquired by Twitter pre-IPO and their stock options are apparently not doing well. Granted it's anecdotal, but I'm not saying that nobody makes money off of Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Twitter's problem is not really revenue; the ads and other sources are working (they'll probably announce over $2 billion in 2015 revenue). Their problem is that Facebook has trained Wall Street to look at Monthly Active Users as a core metric and Twitter's user growth and retention doesn't match up well compared to FB.

Twitter execs have been trying to underscore their "logged-out users", as in views on embedded tweets and other pageviews, and are adding ads in those places.

<comment><USER7> If they retrain Wall Street to value logged out users, then they will have to accept a much lower valuation as the new norm.

Twitter's IPO valuation was based on persuading the market that they were another Facebook, i.e. a sticky platform that would extend out to solve problems in varied industries.

I agree that their media business is really solid. They acquired TellApart, Mopub, and a bunch of smart ad tech people.

The problem is that a solid media business is not what investors were hoping for. If that's Twitter's new story then they're a well-equipped media/ad tech company -- another AOL, Yahoo, or even Criteo. Those are real companies that generate revenue but they're not the sorts of companies able to recruit top- level talent, retain and empower their acquired talent or garner 10x valuations.

<comment><USER8> > Those are real companies that generate revenue but they're not the sorts of > companies able to recruit top-level talent, retain and empower their > acquired talent or garner 10x valuations.

That kind of sums up the current bubble, doesn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Trying to rework Twitter into a profitable company does not seem like an enviable position. How do folks see Twitter becoming sustainably profitable, without tactics that will alienate their userbase?

They've tried ads (promoted tweets), which doesn't seem to have worked well. They've tried analytics targeted at high-end users/companies, which doesn't seem to have much traction (though it does seem both useful and unobtrusive).

Paid accounts? What features would such an account have that free accounts wouldn't?

Longer tweets? That'll certainly change the culture drastically, but not necessarily for the better.

Richer content? Likewise.

Twitter seems like the contemporary company with the most valuable yet least profitable product.

<comment><USER10> I think they have a ton of opportunity with a distribution platform like that. Tweets are already headlines for other products.

A few expansion areas come to mind off hand:

1\. Media distribution

2\. E-commerce (get the hottest, limited supply thing)

3\. Events & ticketing

4\. Financial market alerts

5\. AMA-style Q & As

6\. Chat/AI services and integrations

<comment><USER9> > 5\. AMA-style Q & As > 6\. Chat/AI services and integrations

This actually makes me wonder: if you increase or remove the length limits, how well would Twitter work as a private chat platform?

Because compared to the terrible internal "social platform" sites that some large companies run on their intranets, a company-wide private version of Twitter actually seems like a significant improvement. Use lists (including shared lists) as an equivalent to rooms or groups. That would give three different types of streams: your main feed (people you follow from across the company), the groups you watch or participate in (where most of the productive value comes from), and the firehose (to sample what's going on across the whole company).

As a bonus, if you add in a form of federated accounts, this could allow businesses paying for such a service to have a family of verified accounts on the public Twitter, all tied to their domain (similar to email addresses).

<comment><USER11> Slack?

<comment><USER9> In a way, yes. But far more people know Twitter, including employees and purchase-decision-makers.

<comment><USER12> Imagine "Enterprise Twitter", something like Yammer and Slack. I use Yammer at work and it is worse than Twitter in every way, except it has no post length limits and you can create groups. Without the annoyance of spammers, Enterprise Twitter could implement new features like following #hashtags. Twitter needs to fix their threading UI, though.

Facebook has a "Facebook at Work" enterprise product and, from what I hear, the company dogfoods its own platform for work as an alternative to email and mailing lists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A potential acquisition of Slack and cutting number of employees to < 1000 are 2 things that come to mind. Owning slack opens up other potential streams of revenue in the enterprise space. Or allow twitter users to form groups/rooms on twitter ala Slack.

<comment><USER14> Twitter can't afford Slack. Twitter's market cap is ~12B. There is no way in hell that Slack would sell for less than 10B. They probably wouldn't even sell for that much.

<comment><USER15> 10B for slack! OMG I'm in the wrong business.

<comment><USER16> If you just look at the numbers, pretty much everyone always is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 1\. Lack of clear product vision 2\. Bad execution. Look at Facebook's execution in the last 3 years. Messenger, Sports Stadium, etc. 3\. Potentially another re-architecture?

<comment><USER18> Actually, the insane amount of advertising and media groups on Facebook have pushed me to Twitter, and it's very refreshing. I'll be moving away from everything but FB Messenger (imo their best product).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I see some comments talking about Twitter employee population is too big, is there any statistics about what the percentage is for each department?

Despite the fact I agree the population is quite large, but I can guess at least 30% are marketing folks, 20% are HR and process people, and then the rest are developers. Twitter has done a number of acquisitions. I don't know how many people are running Vine in production today, but my understanding is their NY core team is still quite small. However, given Twitter has launched so many products (including all of the background projects they did to support their production), I won't be surprise if they have at least 10% of their entire engineering force doing infrastructure and operation, and then 40% divided into core product like Twitter, internal application developers, security, solution engineers, etc.

When a new CEO is in charge, some layoff and some re-org usually happen. Some projects have to be closed, some have to be sunset, and some have to be merged. Let see how much they can trim down. It usually take a year to complete the evaluations and projecting new positions.

<comment><USER20> Their website puts 44% into "technical" staff, [https://about.twitter.com/company](https://about.twitter.com/company)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Twitter is actually the only "social network" that I use daily and find real value in so I really hope they can get their act together somehow.

Just a few more random thoughts... Twitter's biggest asset is its core product and they should not meddle too much with it. And I think they should be able to make a company profitable with just that. Even though the product itself is really simple, there are many use cases of it that are not all easily transformed into revenue and probably not so easy to communicate to investors. Its basically a platform that enables a new form of communication. Different people use it for different purposes. Companies use it for different purposes. Traditional media gets lots of their content from Twitter nowadays. Mimicking Facebook in any way would be a mistake because I think it's a fundamentally different product.

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems it's Jan 2000 all over now. Reading old comments from that time, it seemed obvious in late 1999 yet not everyone got it. For example check out the one and two star review comments (1999-2001) on this page: [http://www.amazon.com/Internet-Bubble-The-Anthony- Perkins/pr...](http://www.amazon.com/Internet-Bubble-The-Anthony- Perkins/product-reviews/0066640008/)

<comment><USER23> The bad reviews on that book seem legitimate (e.g. Doomsdaying without specifics so it's difficult to pin down their point). Anyone can constantly publish that the market is in a bubble and then just wait until it goes down and claim they were right. It's completely worthless in that regard because early doomsdaying are worse for investors than getting into the market.

<comment><USER22> In hindsight it's always easy. You know what, the book authors wrote the book in 1999 for the general public, the average joe who bought tech stock without much knowledge. Many insiders from the valley knew about the bubble, yet your grandma in Texas never heard about it in 1999 or Jan/Feb2000. That's why that book helped lot's of people to get out of it, right before the crash - <USER2> doesn't matter when the crash happen, a few months before is better than a months too late, isn't it? Well the one amd two star reviewers thought they were clever or were heavily invested insiders (like you/other downvoter now?). Petty for them that those probably lost their money. It's always good to learn from history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Twitter might have looked like a place to go to but it sure seems to have been a continuous revolving door of exec mgmt for many years now.

<comment><USER25> > Twitter might have looked like a place to go

Which, while slightly off topic, reminds me: does Twitter do automated resume checking? I applied some time back at 3am for a job I was more than qualified for and got a rejection almost instantly. I thought maybe it was an automated system so I tweaked my resume and resubmitted and it was rejected again almost instantly.

Really put me off from ever trying again considering that I met the requirements listed and it declined me saying I did not. I had an indirect way to send a resume through some friends but decided not to bother after that.

<comment><USER24> Given the revolving door of people coming and going frequently, personally that's offputting.

So unless there's a burning reason that compels you to work there, maybe it's not a bad thing to look elsewhere.

Disclaimer: I have never applied to Twitter.

PS. Twitter apparently uses Jobvite [1]

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Why-do-companies-pass-on-using- Jobvite](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-companies-pass-on-using-Jobvite)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just make us pay

Free: current access $25/Year: Access using any 3rd party product $200/Year: Name verified $20,000/year: Corporate account etc

</comment><comment><USER27> Feel bad for a colleague of mine who joined the company when the stock was $60 and got his stock bonus at that price

</comment><comment><USER5> Since this is a leak and not official (yet) we're not sure whose choice this is. If it's Twitters (Jack) then it's probably a good move to get fresh product/engineering talent in to change things up.</comment>


Windows: Exec driver (alpha) plus support – Microsoft/docker - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Microsoft/docker/commit/685c8e66aab8b2b7f7a06abc12cdf22700215971

<comment><AUTHOR> While it's still very early, it's really exciting to see progress being made on Dockerizing Windows.

</comment><comment><USER2> Will the source for the shim be released?</comment>


500 Million Dogecoins Mined by Unknown Hacker in Malware Attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/500-million-dogecoin-mined-hacker-malware-attack/ <comment><USER2> Given that the doge community has tended to be relatively "nice" rather than every-man-for-himself-libertarian, is there any chance of organizing a blacklist for these coins or some such?

<comment><USER3> The "community" cannot blacklist anything, it's the miners. And it is very unlikely that miners with >50% of the network hashrate would agree to this, since most heavy miners don't really belong to the "community" but are just in it to mine enough to be able to sell to cover their hardware and electricity costs.

<comment><USER4> If merchants and exchanges refused to accept block rewards from miners that don't follow a certain rule set, the miners couldn't sell their block rewards.

It's a complicated game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any cryptocurrency of value seems to have to fall back to undesirable bureaucratic policies or be devalued by having its own ideology turned back upon itself.

The human cycles spent in monitoring and securing value will put a major drag on the ability of the currency to stabilize its value. Stable value gives currency utility. Utility gives a currency adoption. Adoption gives a currency value.

<comment><USER6> I don't recall where I got this from, just threw it in to my quotes.txt without referencing it:

"If you collect a bunch of people and tell them to abandon all the social norms like honesty, politeness, respect, charity, and reason in favor of a cause – then the most likely result is that when your cause tries to develop some internal structure, it will be overrun by a swarm of people who have abandoned honesty, politeness, respect, charity, and reason."

<comment><USER7> It is apparently from this article: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/14/living-by-the- sword/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/14/living-by-the-sword/) about the feminism movement turning on itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's around 180k USD at the current exchange rate.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't discovering a huge dogecoin mine devalue it?

<comment><USER10> I'm guessing it'd devalue if they tried to sell at once, but isn't mining public in that the public blockchain already reflects the 500m mined?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Meanwhile, everyone is checking their Synology box for mining software.

<comment><USER12> What's a good way to do this? I have a Synology NAS at home but it's behind a NAT except for specific ports for security cameras. I'll confess I have no earthly idea how to tell if it's been hax0red.

<comment><USER13> Here's a thread on the Synology forums on how to check if your NAS has been infected and how to remove the malware:

[http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=80857&p=3...](http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=80857&p=303732#p303732)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 500 million dogecoins? That's worth almost 12 grams of lunar regolith, right? That dude must be seriously Jonesin' for some titanium dioxide.

I honestly don't think that the dogecoin community could actually do anything about this without breaking character, other than to suggest sending this guy to the moon... and leaving him there.

<comment><USER15> Nah, I'd rather he not be hanging out on my eventual lunar real estate ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> He could have gotten a Ferrari yesterday on reddit for less than half that.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/dogemarket/comments/28c942/sg_2003_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogemarket/comments/28c942/sg_2003_ferrari_360_modena_210_million_doge/)

</comment><comment><USER15> And they say CPU mining isn't profitable. :)

<comment> w-ll That's less true for scrypt based pow chains, although that is rapidly changing with scrypt ASICs now hitting the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> wow.

<comment><USER18> such hack.

<comment><USER19> much coin

<comment><USER20> so profit

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://github.com/foilo](https://github.com/foilo)

<comment><AUTHOR> Account deleted, but this says enough. "openshift-arachni 0 Deploy arachni on openshift"

Apparently hacker used Arachni on openshift to scan for vulnerabilities</comment></comment>


Using hosts file to block ads - <AUTHOR> http://blog.anilshanbhag.in/post/12511348303/block-ads-the-geek-way

<comment><USER2> It is generally not true that nothing exists at 127.0.0.2. For example I have a local Apache server running.

If you are using the hosts file to block the resolution of domains, you can use 0.0.0.0 which is really false. The blocked domain will not be resolved, because the operating system will recognize 0.0.0.0 as false, and a local webserver running on port 80 will not see the requests.

The hosts file is not optimized for large amounts of data, so if this is used to block an excessive number of domains and subdomains, the whole process of name resolution will be slowed down.

The good thing is that a block via the hosts file applies to the whole system and all browsers.

Another bad thing is that the hosts file does not support something like wildcards or regular expressions, each domain or subdomain has to be blocked individually.</comment>


Morgan Stanley says Apple tablet killing netbooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/05/06/morgan.stanley.says.apple.tablet.killing.netbooks/

<comment><USER2> How about this alternative headline: "Netbooks killing netbooks".

I was an independent consultant in my last life, so I get to work with a lot of companies on their technology strategies, and like most geeks, I'm the go- to guy when someone is ready to buy. In my view, what is killing netbooks is the growing sentiment that they suck. The only people I know who really like their netbook are geeks. They like them because they're able to manage the software on their netbook in the way that is necessary to extract performance from netbook-class hardware. Your normal user who runs Windows 7 with anti- virus and their usual suite of software is miserable. I've worked on plenty of netbooks ranging from the Dell Mini series to Asus Eee, and anything with an Atom processor running a full Windows stack (AV included) is painfully slow, even for basic tasks.

I just don't see where netbooks and iPads compete. The people who buy netbooks aren't willing to give up the things that the iPad lacks, and iPad purchasers aren't willing to put up with the lackluster performance of a netbook. There is some inevitable overlap, but any impact will be felt quickly, then taper off.

The netbook's future must include an operating system that is dedicated to the netbook hardware. It needs to work well on a small screen, and much like iPhone OS or Android, it must include design considerations for the hardware that it runs on. Companies like Google and Canonical are in a great position to capitalize on the growth prospects in the netbook market. The primary question is whether anyone will rise to the occasion and build a netbook that works as well as an iPad, but includes features that non-iPad buying folks consider important.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is what I predicted back when it was launched, and I got downvoted :)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081479>

<comment><USER4> So, did you buy Apple stock ?

Predicting the future is easy, the question is which of the various predictions is the right one, for every 'apple ipad will kill netbooks' prediction there was an opposite 'netbooks will sell in spite of ipad' prediction. Consistently being able to predict the future would be very impressive, on a one-off basis it is expected to happen about half the time in cases like this.

That said, the downvotes were entirely inappropriate.

<comment><USER3> The probability of making a correct prediction is only 50/50 if both outcomes are equally likely. Flipping a coin, for example. The probability that one product will reduce demand for another is essentially unknowable. That said, it's possible to make an educated guess, and based on Apple's track record, it was an easy prediction to make. Mostly, I was just surprised that others disagreed.

<comment><USER4> To me it was a toss-up at the time, and I'm still not sure about the longer term.

I'm beginning to change my opinion on it being a fad though, I've seen some real-world uses that would be hard to duplicate with other devices.

But my netbook has absolutely no competition from tablet devices (yet), it is _far_ more useful to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> May 6, 2010

More Recent News: [http://www.macnn.com/articles/10/05/25/potential.impact.stil...](http://www.macnn.com/articles/10/05/25/potential.impact.still.unclear/)

</comment><comment><USER6> My wife has okayed me buying an iPad. GPS is a non-negotiable requirement so a 16 gig 3G + GPS model will hopefully be gracing our living room soon.

I fully expect it to largely replace my wife's MacBook.

Let's face it, like her, most of us just surf the web, write email and update our facebook and twitter statuses on our laptops and netbooks. This market will move to the touchpad computers.

<comment><USER4> > most of us just surf the web, write email and update our facebook and > twitter statuses on our laptops and netbooks.

Right. Writing email on the ipad is one of the harder things I believe (at least, without an external keyboard hooked up to it somehow), and of course we all do nothing but using facebook and twitter all day long...

Really, I think the 'most of us' may be true in a general sense, but if it is addressed to the HN audience then I think you're missing the fact that 'most of us' are probably not at all like you.

Like skinnymuch, above, and you, I browse quite a lot but I would feel like I'm looking at the web through a keyhole on an ipad. And forget about doing any cad work, electronics design, running an IDE and so on.

Basically the ipad is great, unless you're actually working. It's a media consumption device for the most part.

If media consumption is your thing, great.

<comment><USER7> It's a communications device, not a productivity device. That's what Macs are for. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Russia Calls for International Anti-Asteroid System after Meteor Terror [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/435811/20130215/russia-meteor-putin.htm <comment><USER2> The linked site is absolutely horrible. To be able to read the article, you must manually disable two running videos -- one at the top of the page, one at the bottom.

Whoever designed this page deserves either a medal or banishment. Maybe both.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that once the asteroid has hit the atmosphere it can't be stopped. Stories about anti-aircraft batteries or missiles "shooting it down" are absolute bogus. Even if you do hit it, you do nothing to reduce its kinetic energy.

A similar concept: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment>

<comment><USER4> Can you explain why it wouldn't work if it was blown in, say, 1000 pieces that would burn faster than it would burn if it was still in one piece?

Or maybe that once it's in the atmosphere there's no burning anymore?

But then what about kinetic energy loss due to air resistance? Wouldn't it work better with 1000 small pieces instead of just one piece?

And aren't 1000* (x/1000) * speed ^ 2 hits better than a single x * speed ^ 2 hit?

I'm interested and despite reading the wiki link I don't really get it.

<comment><USER5> 1) WikiPEDIA

2) For a meteor so large that it needs to be broken into 1000 pieces to be safely dispersed, it might take a nuclear explosive. Detonating nukes over populated areas is at least as intolerable as letting objects like that impact. Altering their course before they enter the atmosphere is really the only solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm glad to have donated to B612 (b612foundation.org) which is working on a private mission to detect earth-threatening asteroids, a first step.

</comment><comment><USER7> Only $100 trillion after interest payments. Let's bump up to 70-hour work weeks and get crackin' on this system, for the children.

</comment><comment><USER8> Or borrow from 1 or more countries defense budgets.</comment>


Flanby Bird – The French Presidential Version of Flappy Bird - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flanby-bird/id917633130?l=fr&ls=1&mt=8

<comment><USER2> Oh, this is going to be fun. Love political content that has nothing to do with politics, if you catch my drift.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the face of this president, looks better than the true one ;-) More smart

</comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, french people are going to have so much fun with this one !

</comment><comment><USER5> Great fork, well done with nice graphics.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ty guys ;)</comment>


WireGuard as VPN Server on Kubernetes with AdBlocking - <AUTHOR> https://codingcoffee.dev/blog/wireguard_on_kubernetes_with_adblocking/ <comment><USER2> This writeup uses AdGuard for ad blocking, specifically "AdGuard Home". The "How to setup?" link from their homepage pointing to their github repo says that you accept a EULA[0] on clicking the link. The EULA seems to directly contradict their repo GPLv3 license. [1]

[0] [https://adguard.com/en/eula.html](https://adguard.com/en/eula.html) [1] [https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome/blob/master/LICEN...](https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome/blob/master/LICENSE.txt)

<comment><USER3> For people using network level ad blocking, do you ever run into annoyances where there's a site you want to access and just can't? Mostly links that route through an analytics network. First time you click on a twitter link for example, or some referrer store links. And once you're stuck, there's normally nothing you can do. At least on the browser I can temporary turn off an extension, but I've found that network level blockers get in the way sometimes.

<comment><USER4> This is why I don't run pihole or NextDNS at the network level anymore, my wife had too many annoyances with slick deals and other things. Whitelists covered most but not everything.

<comment><USER5> pihole has an API to disable adblocking, which is just an HTTP request so it's pretty easy to trigger. For example, on iOS, write a shortcut so that you can "Hey Siri, disable pihole".

<comment><USER4> I gave her a shortcut that disabled Pihole via ssh but it was still annoying for her. I don't mind just running it on my devices. I pay for YouTube premium and other things already anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe that Kubernetes is artificially injected in your setup. You can just run your DNS server on the server and advertise it on the VPN address. You can still address it from anywhere in the VPN.

<comment><USER7> But then it wouldn't have made the first page

<comment><USER8> I did not downvote you but, serious question: is there a need for this kind of snark?

I understand the point that running a kubernetes cluster just for this would probably be hard to justify. But, if you deploy your services to kubernetes already, then this is a nice guide to do so, isn't it?

I find it hard to understand this attitude, especially in a forum dedicated to talk about technology.

<comment><USER9> But maybe, like in any social network, there is a bias on what is put in front page. And if you have an interesting project, you might want to add an extra layer of complexity and use Kubernetes in order to gain more visibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Algo [1] is a great option for a personal VPN, and it supports WireGuard + ad blocking. I really don't understand why you would want to use k8s for something like this unless it is just a pet project.

[1] [https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo)

<comment><USER2> I have a hard time understanding why people use these small script bundles on top of wireguard. The VPN use case is the best documented one with a large amount of guides and the configuration is very simple.

<comment><USER10> Because it sets up everything in your VPS as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks like the author is using Android. Why not just use AdGuard Home as a DNS-over-TLS server (which is supported on Android P and above)? What's the benefit of plaintext DNS over VPN compare to DNS-over-TLS?

</comment><comment><USER12> Cool, but you can avoid half this setup with Tailscale for free...

<comment><USER6> Yes you can avoid that open source setup for a buggy and even slower userspace wireguard commercial implementation for only 10$/month per user</comment></comment>


While teaching in Japan, it took an enemy to make me feel at home - <AUTHOR> https://catapult.co/stories/on-campus-yuka-my-enemy-friendship-and-teaching-abroad <comment> LV-426 Ugh. You know, I don't expect the Motherfucking Website framework, but here are some of the external domains (excluding numerous subdomains) accessed when viewing this _text article with a few images_ :

        cloudfront.net
        stripe.com
        googleadservices.com
        optimizely.com
        webtype.com
        bootstrapcdn.com
        ads-twitter.com
        disqus.com
        facebook.net
        optinmonster.com
        google-analytics.com
        twimg.com
        optnmstr.com
        mstrlytcs.com
        facebook.com
        newrelic.com
        disquscdn.com
        stripe.network
        fastly.net

<comment><USER2> This is never going to change and in fact will only get worse, since there is no incentive for website owners (besides quixotic comments on hacker news, which let's face it have approximately zero motivational value). Client side solutions are your only real option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is my kind of humour too, it's silly, creative, and in spite of it's surface crudeness can oddly be a strong way of communicating your true feelings.

It's probably best left unspoken but my interpretation is that it's likely the little girl was initially being sincerely spiteful, but then being intimately spiteful can sometimes backfire with empathy, gradually transforming her attacks into this loving joke. I actually prefer that interpretation because it shows the capacity for change, but I might be seeing things that aren't there... His interpretation of her being so insightful from the start is also a nice interpretation, consciously or not.

</comment><comment><USER4> The language barrier might be a big reason that prevents people from making friends very easily

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13651981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13651981)

<comment><USER5> The culture too... Japan is at times the most capitalist and alienating culture possible.

<comment><USER6> A Japanese friend tells me that on the contrary Japan culture can be more like Socialism. not much individualism, strong social security network, high tax, strong government controls, low social mobility, lots of barriers to entrepreneurs. It's just that technology and blinken lights make it seem modern and capitalist to westerners.

<comment><USER7> None of those things are socialism. Socialism is the direct control of industry by the workers communally.

<comment><USER8> Well if you want to nitpick, isn't what you describe communism instead?

<comment><USER7> Some people use socialism interchangeably with communism, e.g. libertarian socialists are the same as anarchist communists. Others, like Marx use socialism to mean a society where both capitalist and communist modes of production coexist in a transitory condition.

In any case, the element I described is necessary for it to be called socialism, and it doesn't exist in Japan at any significant scale. The welfare state is _not_ socialism and this is not a nitpick.

<comment><USER8> > The welfare state is not socialism

You keep using that word, yet I do not think it means what you think it means.

> Some people use socialism interchangeably with communism

Well some people also believe credit and debit cards have no fundamental difference. That they believe it doesn't make it true.

You said yourself something about "the direct control of industry by the worker". That is unequivocally a communist concept. Reforming a capitalist society to those ideals through democratic process _is_ socialism, but the end goal is a communist equilibrium.

Post transition "socialism" has no meaning and no identifying properties: it is a transformative process by opposition to "true believer" anarchist/communist's grand revolution schemes.

So tell me again how Japan is reforming itself into communism?

<comment><USER7> > So tell me again how Japan is reforming itself into communism?

You know for someone acting so smug and combative you've completely missed the point of my remarks. It wasn't me who was claiming that Japan is socialist in any way. Whatever floats your boat tho.

<comment><USER8> I must confess I realised that a couple hours after writing it. I apologise for coming across as smug and missing the point entirely.

This whole "socialism==communism" thing upsets me.

<comment><USER7> It's cool. To be quite honest all of these words are so charged and poisoned that it's hard to use them and successfully communicate with someone whomst doesn't share the same frame of reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it weird that I think this blog post invokes the same sentiments as the anime "Your name"? Sometimes human life is like being alone, swimming in the sea, only for brief periods finding other swimmers that share your fate.

<comment><USER10> Sounds like it's time to read some Haruki Murakami.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a cute and heartwarming story.</comment>


How can the Apple push notifications be so reliable even on the worst networks? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Probably: efficient message sizes (small/compressed/optimized for high latency networks), very eager retry rates upon failure, and maybe even [http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201373](http://support.apple.com/en- us/HT201373)</comment>


RPG Codex Editorial: Without Map, Compass, or Destination - <AUTHOR> https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=11097 <comment><AUTHOR> Since the article doesn't really make it clear, the author "MRY" is Mark R. Yohalem ([https://www.mto.com/lawyers/mark-r- yohalem](https://www.mto.com/lawyers/mark-r-yohalem)), whose RPG writing credits include _Torment: Tides of Numenera_ ([https://www.inxile- entertainment.com/torment](https://www.inxile-entertainment.com/torment)) and _Primordia_ ([http://www.wormwoodstudios.com/p/primordia.html](http://www.wormwoodstudios.com/p/primordia.html)).

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting read. I'd say the most interesting point is the one about how revision is impossible. So much needs to change throughout a game if you suddenly decide to change a scene or completely remove it. Rewriting a line doesn't just mean changing it on paper.

I'd be interested in reading his 'updated' opinion on the same topic, since he starts off saying it's changed since he originally wrote this piece.

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked Tides of Numenera. But I felt, much as its spiritual ancestor, it was not an RPG but more of a Visual Novel. And that is a type of game that is very niche outside Japan and an acquired taste. Not everyone likes reading.

</comment><comment><USER4> It took a bit for me to realize that we are talking of + _C_ +PRG here :(</comment>