A lot we know about pirates is not true, and a lot of what is true is not known - <AUTHOR> https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/winter/feature/lot-what-known-about-pirates-not-true-and-lot-what-true-not-known <comment><USER3> An interesting comment on studying pirates, from /r/AskHistorians:

"Pirate questions are often difficult, because pirates as a group have been so heavily fictionalized -- and were often fictionalized even in the "golden age" of piracy (or shortly thereafter) -- that it becomes hard to separate reality from fiction. Indeed, there is evidence that later sailing crews, including pirates, took on behaviors that they may have read or heard that "pirates" did -- even if these accounts were fictional, meaning that fictional accounts of pirate activities actually became reality due to people acting out what they'd seen in fiction." [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/60deda/how_h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/60deda/how_historically_accurate_is_walk_the_plank_how/)

<comment><USER4> Pirates are not unique in that respect. All mass media is heavily fictionalized. Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell(1807): _I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false._ [https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=2&st=tex...](https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=2&st=text)

<comment><USER5> OT, but, Jefferson appears to have anticipated fake news and the thirst for eyeballs.

>To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

<comment><USER6> I think it's less that he anticipated fake news, and more that it's always been a problem. Journalism has always been self-serving - after all, it's a business.

<comment><USER7> Certainly, I think it is borderline madness that entities such as facebook are being called out in the current "fake news" discussion, this is far from anything new and does not come from media centralization or the internet.

<comment><USER8> Its a level of degrees, though

<comment><USER7> Volume of available information has certainly increased drastically, that is for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My favorite read on pirates and historical events is probably the book about an actual pirate raid on Ireland in 1631 where most of the inhabitants of a coastal village were carried away to slavery by Barbary pirates.

[The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates]([https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0862789559](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0862789559))

The book ends up giving the reader background on the Barbary pirates - a mix of Turks, Dutch, Algerian, and Moroccan pirates led by a Dutch convert to Islam (from Catholicism). It also attempts to tell the stories of as many of the slaves as possible using historical information from people known to suffered a similar fate.

It details some of the stories of Algiers and the Ottoman empire and how Europeans were enslaved by the Muslims who controlled the Mediterranean at the time and who targeted English shipping and later American shipping leading us to dispatch Marines to the shores of Tripoli.

In the end it describes the roundabout way that one of the pirates may have ended up on Manhattan and may be one of the founders of some of America's oldest monied families with descendents that may include people such as Kasey Kasem and Jon Voigt. Really a great story.

I'll have to check out some of these other books mentioned on this thread since history is one of my favorite subjects.

</comment><comment><USER10> By far the most interesting book I've ever read on piracy was The Invisible Hook, by Peter Leeson. It's an analysis on the economics of piracy.

It was so profound in fact that much of it was the inspiration for our business model:

[https://blog.fountstudio.com/yes-we-have-a-pirate- code-1aa1b...](https://blog.fountstudio.com/yes-we-have-a-pirate- code-1aa1b2e02bf6)

<comment><USER11> I suspect this probably works well for you because you're a studio model -- you're billing for hours.

In the case where there is disagreement about what product to build, I could see this more rapidly going sideways. Sometimes having one person with a specific vision can be very helpful.

<comment><USER12> Not the parent, but what I learned about this is that when it comes to decisions that really matter, most people are afraid of the responsibility. Any working system of politics has to take the few ambitious people that remain and work out a bloodless system of resolving disputes between them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My favourite read about piracy was "Pirates and Emperors" by Noam Chomsky. Piracy was sponsored by states who plundered and raided coasts, such as Sir Francis Drake, who was sponsored by the English government. Only it wasn't called piracy of "we" did it, only when other countries did. Kinda similar to today with international terrorism.

<comment><USER14> I recall reading fiction in which there was a big difference between a privateer and a pirate. Privateers were 'licensed' pirates, given a letter of marque that allows them to attack enemies of the state.

The point being that, plundering french ships under an English letter of Marque will prevent the french from calling you a pirate. Instead, you are simply an enemy combatant.

I think this was from a Wilbur Smith novel.

<comment><USER15> I agree with the distinction, but I'm not sure it matters much to those being plundered.

<comment><USER14> Obviously, but it might explain how governments supported privateers whilst despising pirates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's always surprised me is how much of the cartoony image is _real_. There really were pirates with peg legs, hooks for hands and eye patches, pirates that talked with lower-class English accents and kept parrots as pets. There were swashbuckling captains feared all over the seas that held their crews of convicts and scalawags to surprisingly strict codes of honor. As the author says here, a lot of these things only happened in certain places and times, but the fact that these people did really exist is pretty fun and amazing.

<comment><USER17> Well, accident prone work places and rudimentary medical practices lead to those kind of prosthetic devices (and not exclusive to them)

<comment> Digit-Al Is it really an accident if someone slashes half your leg off or bursts your eyeball whilst you're trying to murder them? :-)

<comment><USER18> It seems like a gray area. Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance generally covers death by homicide, although it can have an exclusion for homicide or dismemberment that occurs in self-defense (for example, war injuries are usually excluded). So in this particular legal sense, the "accident" can be seen as on the part of the assailant, who did not _intend_ to be injured (regardless of their _victim 's intent_ to injure). But in general, accident is not a very well-defined term; in this case "occupational injury" may be more appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's an interesting read, though to be fair a lot of what popular culture and fiction says about any romanticised group is not true/heavily exaggerated. Most of what people think they know about ninjas isn't true. Most of what people think about the wild west isn't true. Same with everything from medieval times to Roman soldiers to ancient egypt.

And also like mentioned in the article, much of what we think about when we hear those words/terms is based on a subset of these groups/populations as well.

<comment><USER20> Heck, most of what people know about any other group (romanticized or not) isn't true. For instance, visitors to the United States often worry that they're going to see running gun battles on the street on a daily basis.

<comment><USER21> I mean, within a month of my moving to San Francisco somebody got shot and killed on my street corner. And within the first two months I saw police barricade an intersection walking around with shotguns and automatic rifles due to a bank robbery of some sort. We were told to just walk around and in general nobody seemed to find this event to be anything special.

I've since stopped paying attention to these things. Better that way. Feels more peaceful.

Then again, just last week a guy got shot by police in broad daylight 3 blocks from me because _he was actively in the process of stabbing someone_.

No running gun battles yet that I know of. It's been 2 years or so.

<comment><USER20> Here is the thing: your neighborhood is only a very, very, very small portion of the United States. in 2014, 2% of the counties in the United States accounted for about 51% of the murders, and 54% of the counties had _zero_ murders.

<comment><USER22> > in 2014, 2% of the counties in the United States accounted for about 51% of > the murders,

But what percent of the population did those counties represent? "Counties" are fairly arbitrary divisions, after all. New York County, NY (better known as the burrough of Manhattan) has a population of around 1.6 million.

Kalawao County, HI has a population of 89.

It doesn't really make sense to compare homicide counts by county.

<comment><USER20> "It doesn't really make sense to compare homicide counts by county."

It does if you're a tourist needlessly worrying about getting gunned down while you're visiting the Grand Canyon, or a student needlessly worried that you're going to encounter open gang warfare in a small midwestern college town.

As it happens, the worst 1% of counties have about 19% of the population but about 37% of the murders, so it's not just that these counties are more heavily populated. They really are more dangerous.

Even within those counties, murders are heavily concentrated by neighborhood.

Edit: here's a map that lets you zoom down to the individual census block level, and which shows the rate (thus controlling for population).

Note how much of the country is in the 0-50 category.

[http://nation.maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/splash/index.html...](http://nation.maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/splash/index.html?appid=8125e8f4244a47d986f4cd840824eef3)

<comment><USER23> wait is that map weighted per capita?

<comment><USER24> It appears not. Nor does it account for the severity of the crime among the included indexes.

ADDED:

I misread. Does seem to be a rate.

Not totally clear to me how per capita adds. On the one hand it captures the family member or neighbor known person assault. On the other hand, it's not terribly comforting to know that there are lots of murders somewhere but there are lots of people so you'll probably be OK.

<comment><USER25> It sounded like it was weighted by population (i.e. it compares the crime _rate_ , not the total number of crimes), but it doesn't weight by the severity of the crime.

Colma has an index equal to or worse than most of Oakland, which only makes sense if there's some form of population-weighting, since Colma has only 1500 or so living inhabitants (and doesn't have a particularly bad reputation for crime, except for most "residents" being already dead when they get to Colma).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My favourite story about pirates is what happened when they captured Julius Caesar:

"Not everyone, though, should take the Julius Caesar approach to kidnapping. As a young man, reports Plutarch in his biography of the great man, he was kidnapped off the Dodecanese islands en route to learn rhetoric under the famous teacher, Molon of Rhodes. The Cicilian pirates (from the area of modern Anatolia north and north-east of Cyprus) he treated high-handedly. They asked for a ransom of 20 talents – he laughed at them for undervaluing him and offered them 50. While he was kept captive he treated them like bodyguards rather than prison guards, and frequently told them he would crucify them after his ransom was paid. (Better than that, "He also wrote poems and sundry speeches which he read aloud to them, and those who did not admire these he would call to their faces illiterate Barbarians.") In due course the ransom was paid, Caesar was set free – and, as promised, he crucified them to a man."

[https://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/200...](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2009/oct/27/classics- piracy)

</comment><comment><USER27> "A History of American Privateers" (1899) [https://archive.org/stream/historyofamerica017401mbp/history...](https://archive.org/stream/historyofamerica017401mbp/historyofamerica017401mbp_djvu.txt)

A few blog posts on Baltimore's history as a "nest of pirates" and stories about privateering: [https://maryland1812.wordpress.com/category/privateers/](https://maryland1812.wordpress.com/category/privateers/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Black Sails a good tv series.

<comment><USER29> There are a handful of good performances involved -- e.g., Stephen's Flint -- but by in large, the acting is _terrible_. Which is such a shame because the actual story is pretty decent. If you can make it through the first season, you'll be rewarded.

<comment><USER30> I wouldn't say the acting was horrible, though some actors/actresses weren't great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The headline could be shortened to "A lot we know is not true, and a lot of what is true is not known." That's an unfortunate reality but on the other hand, it keeps life interesting.

<comment><USER32> Both halves of the sentence contain wrong and rendundant statements. Since truth is a relation of correspondence between a proposition and reality and knowledge is justified true belief or it is not knowledge; it is both impossible for us to know untruths if we believe them to be true (we can believe falsehoods but we can only know truth), and likewise truths, being essentially propositions, cannot not be known (can only be known by someone, or there is no one proposing them therefore no truth relation subsists - <USER2> no 'truth' can be wholly unknown to everyone.)

You may say instead: A lot we believe is not true, and we don't know much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A fun book I recommend is the 'Invisible Hook' by Leeson.

Excellent as a summer book, a Libertarian view on the subject with good info on pirates even if you don't agree with the author's view.

</comment><comment><USER34> The real history of the "golden age of piracy" is pretty fascinating. Basically you had Spain trying to claim the entire known world and everyone else fighting back by any means available. Provided a pirate limited himself to Spanish shipping, he could easily become a legitimate member of (even a hero in) one of the other Western nations.

</comment><comment><USER35> I believe we are all "pirates" at heart, which is why they so easily assimilate into society and why we usually ignore them around us as long as they no longer overtly act in that manner.

Obviously, the magnitude of our decent in piratehood varies from person to person, and at some level (murder being obviously a issue) we stop accepting them post-haste.

I find a close analogy to doing drugs and drug dealers in modern society. A lot of upstanding citizens enjoy doing drugs and actually like and feel safe around their drug dealers, but rarely if ever does popular culture show that side of reality.

I don't think its any coincidence that TV and movies show the murderous and thieving side of piracy as to condition us to be appalled by them, in general.

<comment><USER36> > I don't think its any coincidence that TV and movies show the murderous and > thieving side of piracy as to condition us to be appalled by them, in > general.

Is this really true? There's a long history of sympathetic portrayals of drug culture, from Trainspotting (novel and movie) to A Scanner Darkly (novel and movie) to Jesus' Son (novel and movie) to Pineapple Express (mainstream movie), and a whole lot more.

<comment><USER37> Trainspotting's characters may be sympathetic, but it certainly doesn't portray drugs in a positive light. (Though of course heroin is a far cry from weed.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> One of my favorite books is about Captain Kidd. It's a well researched take on his life and it argues, strongly in my opinion, that he was not a pirate and goes into great detail how he (supposedly) led his life. It's a surprisingly captivating read.

[https://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Hunter-True-Story- Captain/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Hunter-True-Story- Captain/dp/0786884517)

</comment><comment><USER39> A fascinating article. There are similar parallels with the smugglers and poachers of my area of the UK - rural Dorset. Characters like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Gulliver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Gulliver) managed to become respectable, but at the same time are subjects of a lot of folklore and tales.

</comment><comment><USER40> Since a few are mentioning pirate books.

My favorite ones are the books written by Ambroise Louis Garneray, which also served under Surcouf, before eventually becoming a painter after his life as pirate.

However even back in his lifetime some would state he colored his memories a bit, so that they were more interesting to read.

Of course, only he knew how much that was actually so.

</comment><comment><USER41> I highly recommend _Of Captain Mission_ by Daniel Defoe.

And _Cities of the Red Night_ by William S. Burroughs :)

<comment><USER42> > I highly recommend Of Captain Mission by Daniel Defoe.

The authorship sometimes attributed to Defoe, but also to a Nathaniel Mist. (It was published under a pseudonym). [1]

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The_Buccaneers_of_America [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/169961.The_Buccaneers_of...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/169961.The_Buccaneers_of_America)

An insightful, nevertheless, somewhat dullfull read.

</comment><comment><USER44> I do wonder how many of these newspaper article were a realistic report -

[http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q=junk+pirates&s=20](http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q=junk+pirates&s=20)

</comment><comment><USER45> I blame [https://damnationkane.wordpress.com/](https://damnationkane.wordpress.com/) the time-traveling pirate.

</comment><comment><USER46> I thought this was about software pirates...

</comment><comment><USER47> Just about pirates?</comment>


Paul Graham Topics - <AUTHOR> http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/75633

<comment><USER2> Looks like it searches the text for text inside <b>...</b> tags and writes out the list of matches in an absolutely positioned div. A Topics script written for a sanely coded website would presumably look for text inside heading tags.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is pretty much how it works (it is a very simple hack). Therefore it is very specific to pg's essays, as it doesn't uses headings. But worked so well for me that I decided to share (and do a sinatra app that injects it, as some of my friends would not install greasemonkey just for this).

<comment><USER2> Simple hacks are often the best. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You can see it working online (without any install needed) on <http://paulgrahamsidebar.heroku.com/>. The source of the web app can be found on github: <http://github.com/danielribeiro/PaulGrahamSideBar>

<comment><AUTHOR> As the hosting site, userscripts.org, seems to be having difficulties ([http://blog.arpitnext.com/2010/04/userscript-org-is- down.htm...](http://blog.arpitnext.com/2010/04/userscript-org-is-down.html)) with alleged unintentional DDOS, I've uploaded the script on github as well: [http://github.com/danielribeiro/PaulGrahamSideBar/raw/master...](http://github.com/danielribeiro/PaulGrahamSideBar/raw/master/resources/paul_graham_topics.js)</comment></comment>


Python Continuous Documentation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/icgood/continuous-docs/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what this project does rather than advocate use of Sphinx and provide some tools to set it up, that is, what is continuous about it, I don't know. Perhaps something to work on in the README.

All being said, Sphinx is a decent tool (and I wrote WAAY too much of it in the last three years), but I have grown to strongly dislike reStructured Text -- I have to look up the URL linking syntax, for instance, almost every time I use it.

Having something like Sphinx that ate Markdown instead would make me rather happy.

<comment><USER3> Having a cheat sheet around, or editor support helps.

I'm not sure fragmenting doc string syntax further is a good idea for the python community. There's been efforts to support Markdown on pypi for README.md. But even that has been met with a lot of resistance.

<comment><USER4> I really don't understand this. Everyone wants to do it their way when it comes to docstrings. One of the big unfortunate culprits is "PyDev", which is an Eclipse plugin for python development. It's sole developer decided to divert from the already-established (if not already-hacky) docstring format of type hinting for lists. So now, instead of: "list of str", we have to contend with another format of: "list(str)".

I can't wait for the python PEP standards for function-annotation to become standard and permeate the editors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great initiative, but beware relying on automatically generated documentation. Keep units documented in the code, and have your higher-level docs handwritten and hand-structured elsewhere, is the policy I've arrived at lately.

(It doesn't make sense to spend resources on having units documented separately from code, because you don't need such docs unless you're working with code. Loads of auto-generated docs also gives a false impression of your project being properly documented, which it isn't unless you also have higher- level hand-written documentation somewhere.

Similarly, it doesn't make sense to keep high-level architecture docs in docstrings, as it's not tied to specific modules, and you normally need it when you're thinking big picture as opposed to working with specific code units.)

Overall, kudos—good documentation is important.

If you're concerned about writing good documentation, I recommend reading these series by Jacob Kaplan-Moss (of Django core development team): [https://jacobian.org/writing/great- documentation/](https://jacobian.org/writing/great-documentation/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's worth mentioning the besides the steps for requirements installation, this workflow isn't limited to Python. Sphinx has support for writing referential documentation with many other languages. Integrating with per- language tools to provide automatically generated reference docs is something we're starting to build out more with [https://github.com/rtfd/sphinx- autoapi](https://github.com/rtfd/sphinx-autoapi), though it's still in its early stages.</comment>


Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/google-eric-schmidt-us-digital-service-academy-2020-7 <comment><USER3> "Palo Alto-based Stanford University ... and MIT have historically been the primary talent pools for the tech industry"

This is far from true. If you look at the total workforce in tech, the majority is by far from much larger, public schools, like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, etc., etc. MIT and Stanford have had amazing great people, but they are far from the "primary" source of talent.

(yes, a bit of an aside, but it rankles)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's honestly insulting copy, and ignores other North American schools like Waterloo that make up a disproportionate part of big tech.

<comment><USER3> (should have included all the great Canadian universities in the list too, my apologies ... not that I included all the great US universities)

<comment><USER5> You said "much larger [than Stanford/MIT], public schools", which definitely includes the top Canadian universities, so you're good

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always wondered why mega billionaires from this era such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg etc. haven't built universities like Stanford, Duke, Cornell etc. - all started by monopolists from the previous era. I guess Eric Schmidt would be the first one

<comment><USER7> It's a federal commission that Schmidt co-chairs.

>haven't built universities like Stanford, Duke, Cornell etc.

I assume the answer is that they generally find that it makes a lot more sense to give oodles of cash to their alma mater or some favored school to get your name on a building and/or really beef up a department than to try to found a new school which would likely take decades to establish any sort of reputation.

<comment><USER8> You're underestimating the egos of billionaires and how they love winning compared to other billionaires. A name on a building is nice. A name on a university that's mentioned with Duke and MIT...now that's something you can brag about. The owners of NBA teams - all billionaires, most willing to lose money year-to-year in order to win and beat the other billionaires. The women's basketball league in Russia - teams owned by oligarchs who all lose money on the league but spend lavishly to beat each other.

<comment><USER7> >A name on a university that's mentioned with Duke and MIT...now that's something you can brag about.

That's the rub though, isn't it. I'm not sure even Bezos has money that would be needed to pull that off over, say, a 10 year horizon. MIT has almost a $20 billion endowment to give some idea of the sorts of money flows we're talking about here. To say nothing of the fact that they already have the faculty, physical plant, reputation, etc.

<comment><USER8> That's why I think they should donate (ie buy) an existing university and transform it. I'd go for Pepperdine, right in Malibu, near the beach, perfect weather, great architecture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it.

Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold:

(1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low paid, there is very little creativity and variety in which to build unique technology, and no reward for the BS.

(2) Current universities already prepare tech workers well. In some cases, there are even joint CS-Public Policy degrees (e.g., MSCAPP at UofC).

Those engineers with policy expertise just don't want to work for the government. I know; I was one of them, and I could not for the life of me find a policy tech job that paid even HALF what tech companies would pay me.

Schmidt should focus on building "the department of innovative technology" and pay engineers appropriately.

<comment><USER10> Classic modern HN comment. The hard working person with a history of success who is trying a risky ambitious project will fail, because they didn't consider the few things a commentor instantly spotted as problems.

<comment><USER11> Classic modern HN comment response. You act like these criticisms are somehow inherently negative...

Just because people love to point out the HN discussion where Drew Houston got scrutiny for Dropbox, doesn't mean that discussion isn't valuable. I'm sure as hell Drew learned a ton from the criticisms.

This is the point of HN - it's OK.

<comment><USER10> Maybe you're right. I felt the over-confident claim that it would fail to make it cross the line.

If we discourage people from trying 1/100 or even 1/1000 chances because it's overwhelmingly likely they fail, we miss out on the massive upside offered by these risks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It reads to me more like Schmidt is proposing the government set up its own "US Digital Academy" so that they _don 't have to compete_ with MIT and Stanford. (I assume the model would be something like free or low tuition in exchange for a requirement to work for the government for x years upon graduation.)

<comment><USER12> I think you're probably closer to the truth there. Even if it isn't an ISA university, my first guess is that it's a way of laundering government funding to create an institution under private control. (This is how most great universities get their start anyway, it's nothing new).

I'm sure ES also has a vision for a modern university that has merit, but I'd be skeptical if it was about more free inquiry and public service - <USER2> more alignment with industry.

Google execs often couch their plans with claims about how it's going to be good for the world, especially partnerships with the government. For instance, the takeover of Moffett field to provide a place for the founders to park their jets, as well as space for the new Google HQ.

<comment><USER7> >I'm sure ES also has a vision for a modern university that has merit,

I don't disagree with any of your points. Cornell Tech in NYC is arguably an example of reimagining things with at least a somewhat clean sheet of paper but I haven't studied it in any detail. One thing that is probably be clear is that there's too much stovepiping in universities in general. MIT's new interdisciplinary Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing is another example of trying to bring more disciplines under one roof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The biggest challenge in recruiting technical talent to the government is the GS payscale. This program is being recommended to Congress, so I assume it's an attempt to indirectly increase compensation by offering free tuition to people who commit to government employment- it also is likely attempting to target college age kids, who could accept government payscales more easily than someone who already works in the private sector and has gotten used to higher compensation. Schmidt is no dummy, and I expect that this would work, but it's still a hack around the fundamental problem of IT compensation scales that are roughly 50% of private sector levels.

A more straightforward solution would be to just create a new payscale (say, the Executive Technical Service) for IT professionals and other technical domains where federal compensation lags the private sector. The Senior Executive Service (the payscale for senior leadership like department and agency executives, including most political appointees) has about 8000 members- if you gave this system twice as many people and paid them all $100k more than the GS system would, you'd increase the federal budget by about $1.6 billion a year, or 0.04% of the 2019 budget, almost all of which you'd recover anyway by replacing IT contractors who generally cost the government between $250k and $350k each a year. Unfortunately, this solution would really piss off the big federal contractors, who would heavily lobby against it, which is why it doesn't happen even though more reasonable payscales have been found for federal doctors and lawyers.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think this is a great idea.

You must ask yourself why the government is able to retain word-class managers and jurists despite stiff competition from the private sector. James Comey was an executive at the world's largest hedge fund, why did he quit for a government job where he was making 100x less? Any federal judge could've made a fortune in corporate law, why didn't they choose to? Because there is a sense of prestige and national duty about their posts. Creating a similar status for technologists in government would go a long way towards recruiting and retaining top talent.

If we want to convince people that being a government engineer is worthwhile and respected, starting with students seems reasonable.

<comment><USER15> I think it's more complicated than that, all of these roles come with substantial amounts of near unilateral executive power that can impact the way the country is run for decades to come.

Even all of the existing US government tech posts like the USDS and 18F are ultimately there purely to service the needs of a bureaucratic agency and their particular management.

For a technology specific role to have the same level of prestige as someone on the federal bench or leading the FBI, they'd need to be giving them unilateral regulatory powers over the broader technology industry in the country.

<comment><USER16> I'd just push back - technology is a tool to accomplish the missions of government.

The positions that run those missions - enforcing the law, ruling on the law, running Medicare, etc etc - should be more prestigious. That said, if the government wants to have prestigious technical work, it should be more open to taking big swings (in an agile way) on hard problems, but that requires investment and taking risks.

<comment><USER15> I think there would be comparable prestige if the government did something like roll out public broadband or made some sort of publicly owned social media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe this article is missing some important details but I don't see how having a special university is going to help the problem of getting more technical talent into government work.

There are already tons of government scholarship programs with strings attached in the form of post graduation service requirements and other hiring funnels that bring in new graduates. The government's problem isn't hiring new grads it's keeping those people once they get a few years experience. The biggest drain is probably government contracting companies who often offer literally twice the salary for the same work. Combine that with the soul sucking aspects that you would find at any large company and you have the perfect recipe for not being able to recruit and retain qualified mid career people.

It's hard to imagine how any amount of indoctrination in the ideals of public service at a special school will overcome those things without something else changing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe I'm just a bitter pessimist, but I don't relish the idea of Schmidt telling _more_ people how to think.

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember a story that Leland Stanford asked what is needed to found a university and the answer was 200 million dollars. What they didn't tell him, that it also takes 200 hundred years.

Universities are a longterm project, if a university is good or not, is something you don't really realise while you are there but when you are finished and try to use your knowledge.

<comment><USER20> Stanford isn't 200 years old, neither is Berkeley. Many UC campuses are a lot younger, UCSC was founded in 1965.

<comment><USER7> Even in the East a lot of universities aren't that old. A lot of well known institutions postdate the Civil War and those aren't 200 years old yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > funnel tech workers into government work

Government work doesn't pay well, so it will never be as prestigious as Stanford or MIT.

EDIT - previous title had the headline part where it said it will "rival Stanford and MIT"

<comment><USER22> Not everything in the world can be measured by pay.

Sure, an FBI Criminal Profiler earns a tiny fraction of what a google dev earns. But one can take serial killers off the street, and the other just makes ads more annoying.

A Social Worker earns almost nothing, but they get to help the most needy of people get the help they need. A FB engineer earns 10x the pay, but just makes ads more annoying.

A teacher earns almost nothing, but they get to teach the next generation of society. An Amazon engineer earns 10x the pay, but just finds ways to sell you more stuff you don't need.

No one goes into government work b/c the pay, they do it for reasons they find more important.

<comment><USER23> "the other just makes ads more annoying"

The meme that never dies. Advertising funded tons of tons of businesses on apps and on web, employed hundreds of thousands directly and created a large economy.

Disclaimer: Former google, current facebook employee, working in ads.

<comment><USER24> and most important of all: it created a new group of rent-seekers from scratch. well done!

<comment><USER23> Not sure what you are saying.

<comment><USER24> well, did adtech change the available income or why is it that it's so much bigger than the old way of doing advertisement?

I think the only point, why you are seeing this "growth" is that you have an oligopolic structure which is just skimming money (mainly to the benefit of the 0.1 percenters) without creating any additional value compared to the traditional way of doing advertising? Or how again are you increasing available income with your smokescreen of targeted ads?

EDIT: actually I think wikipedia captured it perfectly [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent- seeking](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking) \- and no, financing some productive webbusiness (which there are?) with a minuscule fraction of the ad money or following personal spleens of the founders/crazy people is not altering the outcome.

<comment><USER23> Plenty of (say, gaming, entertainment etc) companies in developing countries employed plenty of people due to advertising revenue, which would otherwise not be viable.

Google display ads takes a fraction of revenue and passes the rest to publishers. Same with audience network.

Digital advertising lowered the barrier significantly to making profit for lots of digital businesses. It enabled lots of physical businesses to get recognition and discovery in one way or the other.

Not sure why this is not clear, but happy to discuss more.

<comment><USER24> Why not pay them directly in a functioning economy, if its worth it? Why do you need to skim from random (!) other ventures to finance this kind of business?

I'm also not sure, if I understand this correctly, but 32% (or _1 third_ ) seems like quite a big "cut" for any service to me - but apparently ratios changed with the internet which allows placing these ads at such a low cost :) [https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en](https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en)

So, do these "digital businesses" create anything, or just skim money? Just because you've built a network of rent-seekers, this doesn't really change the concept.

Also could you explain how physical businesses actually benefit from the "new kind of ads" in a more concise way compared to the weasel-wording "one way or the other" \- is more product sold because of ads in a certain area (doubtful, because ads won't change available income), does the percentage of advertising spend go down, when all business go "online" (doubtful as well, or how can you generate growth beyond the growth of the economy, which is the declared target of most adtechy-enterprises?!). So this is frankly neither clear to me nor apparently to you (nor anybody else I suppose), but these are the hard questions society has to answer, before accepting "adtech" as a productive sector of the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't help but think ARPA is a better model than what sounds like a government-controlled vocational school for script kiddies.

</comment><comment><USER26> The question isn't whether it will rival Stanford and MIT, because it never will with a one year program. The question is whether it could incrementally attract more talent into the industry.

</comment><comment><USER27> The naming, "US Digital Service Academy", seems to suggest that it will be tied to the US Digital Service - which would be great. I think that might be the only government organization that I would actually be excited about working for.

Side note, I really hope the tour-of-duty model becomes more popular with techies, and more encouraged by employers. I can see it having numerous bidirectional benefits

</comment><comment><USER28> Eric is one of the most accomplished leaders in tech but also one of the most overconfident and out of touch. So this could really go either way.

</comment><comment><USER29> On a tangent: when he was young, Schmidt worked (alongside a young Wadler) on the Poplar functional language.

[http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/CSL-81-11_Re...](http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/CSL-81-11_Real_Programming_in_Functional_Languages.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER30> Interesting. I don't see the point, though.

The issue with the US government and software is not a lack of talent (within the country, or even within the government itself). But a poor structuring and assigning of responsibilities and a severely risk-averse culture, paired with the overreaction of a risk-accepting culture occasionally showing up and fucking it all.

There is, or will be, sufficient talent in the US to maintain and develop government software systems. Flat out, people keep going into CS and software engineering degree programs. Programming itself is ludicrously accessible compared to nearly any other technical discipline because the cost of entry is about $200 and time.

The problems that actually need to be resolved:

1\. Government employees (contrary to popular opinion) are grossly underpaid for their expertise. This leads many of the best to leave and go to private industry and/or government contractors. Those who remain are truly civic minded, or zombies. Moving away from GS helps here (pay for time in grade), but the alternatives are also severely abused. NSPS paid people for changing positions, so there was a ton of job hopping before it was canceled. Expertise wasn't really cultivated, only the same stupid culture of bouncing between jobs you find in parts of private industry. AcqDemo is somewhat better, but in implementation lost all its potential value. Still better than GS, but only barely.

2\. In-house development shops are typically made to compete for contracts in the same way as private companies. This creates some interesting conflicts within the organizations. And a ton of the in-house software development efforts are spent on maintenance, not developing new systems. So a different kind of expertise shows up, but not the expertise needed when truly novel projects start up.

3\. The people in charge of the IT and software development efforts are usually inexperienced with IT and software development. They're either straight out of college EEs (CS people are at a disadvantage in many government shops) or career civil servant bureaucrats. The latter rely on those same inexperienced EEs. This leads to an incredibly advantage for contractors to push program offices around because they can come off as reliable experts, until you've been burned a few times. But hit a couple milestones and the civil servant in charge is already promoted out of that position and a new one is left holding the bag when shit hits the fan.

4\. Risk averse IT severely restricts development environments even when software is made in-house. This leads to incredible slowdowns and often automation is impossible due to having to develop and test on multiple test/dev network enclaves that are separated even from each other. An example is the typical CCB (configuration control board) process which is a monthly (at best) meeting where, mostly, managers decide what new things can be installed on the network. You want an updated version of VS or GCC? Gotta wait a month. You want to use a common library? Gotta wait a month. And that's on top of the delays imposed by security scans (a manual process, that could be automated if it's necessary).

5\. Risk accepting IT goes too far the other way as a reactionary response to the risk averse culture that held them back. Their fuck ups lead to the people in (4) being able to justify their positions and cement their culture.

You have to improve the approach to IT, the staffing of the acquisition offices to have competent individuals in the appropriate fields, not just successful (from a promotion perspective) bureaucrats, and probably increase pay across the board for technical people.

<comment><USER31> > The issue with the US government and software is not a lack of talent > (within the country, or even within the government itself). But a poor > structuring and assigning of responsibilities and a severely risk-averse > culture, paired with the overreaction of a risk-accepting culture > occasionally showing up and fucking it all.

Bureaucracy in a nutshell. I wonder if there is a single country the western world where it is actually efficient...

<comment><USER30> Bureaucracy will never be efficient. It is resilient and can survive. It is an organism. It presses itself into the cracks and crevices of society until it seems like the essential material composing our structure. But it's not, it's just slime mold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Who's supposed to fund this? Is Schmidt putting up the money himself?

Is this to be a real college, with accreditation, or something like "Singularity University" or Udacity or DeVry?

<comment><USER33> > Who's supposed to fund this?

The government- Schmidt is making a recommendation to Congress.

> Is this to be a real college, with accreditation

Yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The article doesn't mention it, but given the current crisis and the huge move to remote education underway currently it would be interesting if this had an approach that took that into account.

</comment><comment><USER35> The elephant in the room when talking about making government work more like startups:

We don't allow governments to fail (easily) but startups fail frequently and we acknowledge that both bankruptcy and team failure leads to knowledge that is rare to gather without actually experiencing the failure.

I'm not advocating for anything in particular except to acknowledge this fact.

</comment><comment><USER36> The federal government pay cap in 2019 was $166,500....

These folks are going to go to this university that is better than Stanford and MIT (let's assume this mammoth task happens) and then eschew working for big tech paychecks in favor of working for the government?

<comment><USER37> That is not entirely true, but the devil is in the details. As an example, the Federal government employs thousands of physicians at the VA and, depending on specialty, they are paid significantly more than this. Last time I checked, they capped out at $400k:

[https://www.va.gov/OHRM/Pay/2020/PhysicianDentist/PayTables_...](https://www.va.gov/OHRM/Pay/2020/PhysicianDentist/PayTables_20200216.pdf)

Anyway, the point is that the federal government can and does pay significantly more than the GS pay scale to people who are federal employees and enjoy federal pensions. Whether or not the feds will choose to pay that to those who work in technology remains to be seen.

<comment><USER36> I remember a couple departments (including the NSA) complaining about the federal cap when it came to some IT projects, so I'm not sure it is a sure deal to get past that cap.

The VA is a whole other land of bureaucracy that plays by its own rules.

<comment><USER37> Oh, I very much agree and they were most certainly capped at that organization. It's a major problem because and I very much agree with your original comment that there are better options now working for big tech.

I guess my point above is that feds can fix this if they truly wanted to. There's precedent for them hiring people for far more money than the regular GS rate when they need to. It would be impossible to hire a surgeon for $160k, but they need them, so they pay more. At the moment, the government doesn't feel they need to pay more, so they don't. I hope someday that will change and think it's important to educate and lobby the federal government to help them understand this and change their policy.

<comment><USER16> This isn't a decision that can be made within the executive branch (I think). Congress would have to pass laws that enable "bureaucrats to get paid more."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > _would ideally produce graduates imbued with a sense of government duty._

I'm not sure this is the best selling point to attract a young & diverse student body, given current world events.

</comment><comment><USER39> > one that would ideally produce graduates imbued with a sense of government > duty.

I wonder how they plan to do that.

</comment><comment><USER40> cool, give it a century or so to get used to itself and we'll see how we've done.

</comment><comment><USER41> Peter Thiel was thinking about starting a university at some point too. He decided not to because it was too hard. Seems like it could be a great idea though. Government at all levels in the US has a lot of problems and getting smart, reform-minded people into it would hopefully help correcting that.

</comment><comment><USER42> 1\. What guarantees does it offer for ideology neutrality? 2\. What guarantees does it offer for the diversity of ideas? 3\. What guarantees does it offer for excluding censorship of the expression of thought as a measurable true defense of freedom of thought and expression?

<comment><USER42> What would be valid reasons for the previous comment to be _just_ silently downvoted?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This likely will prove to be much bigger news than many anticipate today.

</comment><comment><USER44> Good for him

</comment><comment><USER45> Huh. As the page loads for me, the headline is also the entirety of the content.

Though it is longer than presented here. The rest is "...and funnel tech workers into government work".

The news is summarizing itself now!

<comment><USER46> The formatting at businessinsider is often pretty crummy. There is a whole article after the picture and some bullet points.

<comment><USER45> No there isn't, not for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try this link: [http://archive.vn/jFoU3](http://archive.vn/jFoU3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> My favorite quote is at the end:

"Per the report, the Digital Service Academy would serve as a third reservoir for the best and brightest technology workers, but one that would ideally produce graduates imbued with a sense of government duty."

... because places like MIT and Stanford sure as hell don't!

It looks like Schmidt just wants the next generation of students to forgo their dreams of starting the next Google.

I think a better idea to help this country stay competitive is for companies like Google to stop offshoring their operations ... and pay their goddamn taxes like the rest of us.

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/31/21044662/google-end- tax-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/31/21044662/google-end-tax-loophole- double-irish-dutch-sandwich-2020)

[https://fortune.com/2019/12/06/big-tech-taxes-google- faceboo...](https://fortune.com/2019/12/06/big-tech-taxes-google-facebook- amazon-apple-netflix-microsoft/)

<comment><USER48> I can't speak for Stanford but MIT is extremely closely tied with the federal government. The Lincoln Lab for instance gets ~$1B/year from the Defense Department. The only reason MIT became a well known institution at all is because of its ties to the military.

<comment><USER47> MIT became a rich institution because of its ties to the military.

Lincoln Laboratory is often called a "PhD graveyard" for good reason: it's where reject academics who were denied tenure go to die.</comment></comment></comment>


The New Lion King trailer style transformed to resemble the animated version - w-ll http://geekdommovies.com/heres-what-the-live-action-lion-king-would-look-like-if-the-cgi-was-closer-to-the-original-animated-movie/ <comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it was inspired by the review by David Ehrlich?

> David Ehrlich of IndieWire panned the film, writing, "Unfolding like the > world's longest and least convincing deepfake, Jon Favreau's (almost) > photorealistic remake of The Lion King is meant to represent the next step > in Disney's circle of life. Instead, this soulless chimera of a film comes > off as little more than a glorified tech demo from a greedy conglomerate — a > well-rendered but creatively bankrupt self-portrait of a movie studio eating > its own tail."

<comment><USER2> Don't lessen his achievements by connecting him with movie critics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cartoon eyes and to a lesser extent mouths did a lot to display emotion. We are too caught up in making things photorealistic that we miss out on these things.

<comment><USER4> I think most animators still understand that, and they know how to do animation properly (make it expressive, use brighter color palettes, etc), but I'm guessing that a lot of the producers and people involved in this particular film just wanted to make something "cool". The entire thing is basically a vehicle for Disney to show off their fancy rendering engine.

<comment><USER5> I couldn't for the life of me understand why they even decided on this project. With films like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin they recreated the animated film as a live-action one, which makes sense to me as a worthwhile endeavor, regardless of the result. But here they've just converted one animation style to another, which I don't understand the creative need for, so I assume it's just a money grab.

<comment><USER6> With every Pixar film, the team learns something new or how to do something better. This has been said in multiple interviews with newer Pixar films that come out compared to the old ones.

Aside from the superb storytelling and all that, it makes the team push for new breakthrough in animation.

I can see Lion King serving as a real world project for Disney animators in the same way, and a way to get paid to learn and push the fold in realistic animation. Not saying that's the reason behind it as I'm sure remaking a bunch of these movies was likely planned already but if you can level up your team, learn something new in the process, and get paid for doing it, why not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm very happy that Disney went whole-warthog in making the models realistic. This halfway between cartoony-but-real look isn't good. The new Lion King was visually stunning and reminded me of a Nat Geo film. The characters didn't emote very well, and the voice actors had to carry the performance, but at least the animals looked _good_.

(That's not to say the story was great... but that's also not the point.)

Detective Pikachu almost fell into the uncanny valley with some characters (especially the ones with the "real" eyes) for the same reason.

For 3-D cartoon animals, IMO Zootopia's style really hit the sweet spot of cartoony-but-recognizable species.

 _Wow, 5 downvotes in under an hour for stating my opinion. Would somebody who thinks otherwise like to share?_

<comment><USER8> It's a good comment, except that you complain about being downvoted, and I always always downvote that kind of meta whining.

<comment><USER7> Turns out without that meta-whining I'd be sitting at the bottom of the thread, and you wouldn't have seen it. 30 minutes after making the edit it shot up 8 points.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just don't find the "New Lion King" all that visually enjoyable aside from purely the appreciation for the talent required to make something look so realistic. I just don't think the various animals are all that compelling to look at as animated, fictional characters.

<comment><USER10> I view these as the equivalent of a video game company porting its older titles to new platforms. I have no data to support this, but I would guess that the next generation of kids isn't watching the old versions of Snow White, Cinderella, etc—at least, not at the same level. But Disney needs these movies and their iconography to be embedded in children's minds in order for the multi-billion-dollar merchandizing machine built on them to keep on printing cash. So Disney is bringing their back catalogue up to date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Impressive work, but the end result is the worst of both worlds for me. If you want to make it cartoony, there's no need to keep the pretense of realism at all. Just go with Pixar or old Disney style animation.

</comment><comment><USER12> The transformed version looks way better. They should hire that guy to do the whole movie!

</comment><comment><USER13> It just looks like more saturated colors, but still similar texture detail. Was this done using standard color tools?

<comment><USER14> ...Can you really not see the huge difference in the faces?

<comment><USER15> Maybe he has undiagnosed prosopagnosia.

<comment><USER13> I was watching on my phone and looking at the overall image texture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now they just need to use this same tech to try and fix the sonic the hedgehog trailer.

</comment><comment><USER17> I came to scoff but is very well done. Many recursion jokes lie in here.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ah, I was hoping to see it the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER19> Very impressive result. But Christ is it ugly.

<comment><USER20> which one?

<comment><USER19> The transformed version. It looks very uncanny valley to me.

<comment><USER21> I had the exact opposite reaction ...

<comment><USER22> Maybe he thinks the original is the transformed version

<comment><USER19> Hahaha that's a funny one but (at the risk of just adding a new comment that'll get just as downvoted) I've seen the movie so I know which one is real.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Antidepressants Target the Wrong Thing, and Only Work 50% of the Time - <AUTHOR> http://machineslikeus.com/news/why-antidepressants-dont-work-everyone

<comment><USER2> _The rats, after decades of development, are believed to be the most depressed in the world._

I'm not against animal testing in general or this sort of thing in particular, but I found that sentence strangely evocative.

<comment><USER3> My first thought was that at least one of them should be named Marvin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Didn't want to make a new submission, but I read this yesterday: 'Anti- depressants cut suicides', <http://www.thelocal.se/22842/20091023/>

Also includes the origin of the Swedish "suicide myth" at the end.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article is interesting, but the conclusion that _all_ antidepressants on the market are flawed is not correct, mostly because different antidepressants target different systems in different ways. I took Celexa for over a year, it worked OK but not great, and then after reading the wikipedia article on treatment of depression, I tried SAM-e, which works much better (200mg Jarrows in the morning with a B-complex supplement to break down the homocysteine). Prior to Celexa, I tried Zoloft, which was completely useless.

<comment><USER6> One of the odd things about SSRIs that I learnt recently...

I was reading up on peripheral neuropathy, since I'm suffering some nasty nerve damage in my feet due to diabetes, and discovered that SSRIs are one of the most effective treatments for peripheral neuropathic pain. (which probably didn't help with my diabetes diagnosis, since I've been on a SSRI (paroxetine) for anxiety for the last 3 years, and it was the pains in my feet that led to testing for diabetes...)

<comment><USER3> The current Scientific American has an article you may find interesting on the biology behind certain kinds of chronic pain. In particular there is a certain kind of cells called glia whose job is to heal hurt neurons. They consider active pain neurons to be hurt, try to "heal" them, and increase the sensitivity, leading to a nasty feedback loop as anything will cause pain.

There are treatments being developed for this kind of pain. But one of the more effective existing ones is marijuana. Marijuana dials down the glia, which breaks the feedback loop. If you live in a state that allows medical marijuana, you may wish to look into this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm kind of against a pharmaceutical regimen for most people. I understand that there are SOME things that people cannot fix themselves, but a lot of the cases, I don't believe drugs are necessary. Let's face it. People take pills because it's easier than eating a healthy diet to make your blood pressure go down.

Depression, in my opinion, is something most people can overcome. Rather than looking within and learning about themselves, most people would rather just pop a feel-good pill every morning.

And the drugs themselves. They're essentially a bunch of random chemicals that big pharma shoves down the throats of test subjects and looks for good things that could happen. I would rather deal with my mild depression than take pills that could make me nauseous, give headaches, make me bleed from strange places or even kill me. Most people don't weigh the costs and benefits of taking prescription drugs... because it's easier.

<comment><USER8> Now, I'm not a cheerleader for modern-day psychopharmaceuticals; I often liken antidepressants to kicking a television and hoping that the picture clears up. They often don't work, or mysteriously work for some time, then stop, and there doesn't seem to be a ton of rhyme or reason to it.

That all having been said, from what I've read, for most people with chronic depression, the most effective treatment is a combination of antidepressant drugs and behavioral therapy. For a lot of people, one or the other alone doesn't work very well, and I certainly hope that no one would be unwilling to get help because people would think them weak or lazy for relying on antidepressants.

Put simply, if you have chronic depression, you can use all the help you can get. Sometimes drugs don't work, many have awful side effects, or may just not work for any given person, but it's often worth the trouble in order to fight clinical depression. If people can effectively manage it with behavioral therapy, then great, but for all the people out there who've tried and for whom that's not enough, I hope you reconsider the idea that for the most part, antidepressants are for the lazy.

<comment><USER9> I kind of agree with both of the above thoughts. I've made very drastic lifestyle and dietary changes to get myself well. I am not particularly prone to depression. If I am "depressed" for more than three days, it is usually bad anemia. I had no idea how bad my anemia was until it got better and my body just worked differently. Being anemic was my norm and I just didn't know one's body could feel different and work different.

On the one hand, I think that if one goes far enough with dietary and lifestyle changes, more can be done to address the underlying physiological problems than most people realize. On the other hand, I am aware that depression can be a response to feeling helpless about your life. Drugs won't fix that. Making different choices does more for that kind of depression.

Again: I'm not very prone to depression. I am prone to getting angry in the face of stuff like that. But the same principle applies: Stewing about things isn't healthy and doesn't make one feel better. I have found that the best antidote to my tendency get angry about stuff is to DO something, no matter how small. Since I tend to be the "bounce off the walls" type, I tend to make good friends with folks who are prone to depression. (Two bounce off the walls types can be a very destructive combination whereas depressed folks find I liven things up and I find they help ground me.) So I have assisted a couple of people with both the behavioral and dietary stuff the promotes their depression.

For me, getting healthier has been a fascinating study in using negative outcomes of life as feedback for what I need to correct in my own thought processes and behavior. I don't even know how to adequately put it into words. I think the best I can do is the explanation I once gave my son when he was younger: That life is like a video game and you either learn from your mistakes or Game Over, only we don't have a reset button. So life-threatening events are a big wake-up call that "hey, stupid, you can't keep doing that". The trick is to figure out what things you can't keep doing.

I think I have dug my grave deep enough and should probably just clam up now. :-D</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Simple JSON database of unit conversion factors - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/GhostWrench/unitdb <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I couldn't find anything like this and thought it would be useful, so I spent some time putting it together. Hopefully others find it useful!</comment>


Big Three Agree on Guidelines for Countries Who Restrict Human Rights - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/10/28/microsoft-google-yahoo-privacy-policy-human-rights/

<comment><USER2> The right way to address this would be to not setup a physical presence in those countries, but instead offer their (localized) services from outside the borders. When an oppressive country was looking for information on a dissident, they would have to prove the target was a criminal under the host country's legal system. But that would require a _real_ backbone instead of a cushy press release.

<comment><USER3> > The right way to address this would be to not setup a physical presence in > those countries,

I thought this at first too, but in the end "those countries" include the USA, Canada, UK, etc.

To follow your comment that would mean the company couldn't incorporate at all and would have to have no physical presence in any country what so ever.

<comment><USER2> I originally thought about making a snarky comment asking if these policies applied to the US, but my pragmatic side won out.

There's a bit of difference for a country with laws and traditions to explicitly punish dissenters. The local police in China can probably call up a tech company and merely ask for information on a suspected dissident. In the US, they'd at least have to go to court with a plausible reason. I'm sure the big tech companies are in bed with the "intelligence" community in the US, but nothing we say is going to make them ruffle feathers in their primary market.

The ideal approach involves technical decentralization to put data out of the reach of _any_ government. But if we're talking about preexisting companies looking to make money off of services that have already been designed, the only thing they might be willing to change is how they deploy.</comment></comment></comment>


Humanity or gtfo - <AUTHOR> http://lindseykuper.livejournal.com/418854.html

<comment><USER2> Let me get this straight . . . you guys:

Someone came into the channel and addressed the group with a colloquial "guys", by asking "guys, can you recommend a library?".

The author of this account, who is admittedly preoccupied with issues of gender and sexism to the point that they admit to having to make efforts not to take offense at people using "guys" colloquially, accosts the unsuspecting visitor.

... Even though they pointed out that they have gone out of their way to no longer take offense at the colloquial use of the word "guys".

... But is, then, offended by the colloquial use of the word guys.

... To the point that they accost the visitor over it. Even implying in front of the whole channel that the visitor is sexist and ignorant that women exist on IRC (which can be the only purpose of calling them out on that word).

The visitor is likely surprised, shocked, and did not come into the technical channel to discuss a technical question to have a discussion about gender and linguistic issues, so tries to diffuse the situation with some poorly chosen attempt at ironic humor by rhetorically employing a couple common internet memes "proof" and "boobs or gtfo". You know, the same way a lot of nice normal people might awkwardly respond to being sideswiped out of nowhere by someone with a pet-issue to grind at every opportunity (though that is something I usually ascribe to people trying to turn every conversation into a debate about guns, abortion, immigration, or Obama's birth certificate).

Nobody has ever been out in public or at a party minding their own business or having a discussion and had someone come out of the blue to attack them loudly in front of everybody about something crazy that didn't seem to have any relevance to the moment? I'm sure that's how this person felt.

Kind of the way I remember having someone come up to me out of nowhere in public to talk about how I needed to find god and was going to hell and, dismissively, I told them I didn't have time to listen to them, because I was already late for a group satanic sacrifice. Spoiler -- I wasn't actually a satanist and I wasn't really on my way to participate in any sort of sacrifice. I was being _gasp_ dismissive toward the person who attacked me like a crazy person, out of nowhere.

The author, who used to get upset at "guys", but no longer gets upset at "guys", except that they just got upset at "guys" admits that the thing that actually upset them was the way the visitor responded. They "expected" or "wanted" the person to engage in a discussion of gender and linguistics. The author states this in the first half of their livejournal update.

In short, the author of this livejournal entry was trolling, knew they were trolling, and while probably unwilling to admit that they were, goes on to detail what can only be described as trolling behavior on their own accord.

And, because the visitor chose to sarcastically dismiss it by repeating a couple silly internet memes rather than take the author's bait to have a heated gender and linguistics debate in a tech channel, the author appealed to the moderators to have the visitor banned . . . which he then was.

The author then poses the question about whatever are we to do about trolls? A hypocritical question, given the circumstances. Nonetheless, it would seem fairly self-evident that what you should do about trolls in a community is appeal to the moderation team of your community to do something about it and if they don't, consider finding a community with better moderation.

I would suggest that the visitor responded to being accosted rather poorly, but I can certainly understand the intent behind his poor response. He was attacked out of nowhere for something trivial (and not even reaching the levels of trivial to most human beings who simply wouldn't give a damn), but probably should have paused for a moment longer and taken a deep breath before responding _at all_. Perhaps even ignoring the comment entirely and going on with his technical purpose for being in the channel.

I would also suggest that the author was clearly engaging in trollish behavior and then lobbied the moderation in a room that this person is already known in to deal with the person that they tried to troll by trying to label _them_ a troll. They got their way, likely due to the bias of familiarity with the author, and got the person banned. Then went on to write an article outlining everything and purporting to be yet another victim of yet another brash example of sexist internet trolls.

My advice? If you're going to bitch about trolls on the internet, don't be one yourself. If something truly and legitimately is offensive and disruptive, seek moderation, which exists in most communities. And, finally, no matter how well-intentioned you are, someone will always find things to be offended by with regard to yourself, so learn to just shrug it off, not respond or engage such people at all lest you become fodder for their crusade, and just carry on with what you were doing before.

Addendum:

None of this is meant to imply that there are not legitimate assholes out there intending to offend and disrupt, because there certainly are plenty of them.

I am also not "excusing" or "justifying" anyone's behavior. I know the common response to anything short of "oh, you poor thing -- you had to deal with that hideous troll!" would be treated as excusing mistreatment on the internet. I am simply trying to clarify what happened here, according to the livejournal entry, itself. To suggest that the author played a purely innocent role here and was not itching for a fight and engaging in trollish behavior here and then lashing out (via moderators) at someone would be pretty myopic.

<comment><USER3> Not excusing and justifying? You flipped the blame onto her, calling her a troll, and rationalizing away at the offensive comments. She hinted that she was a woman, and their first response is to ask to see her breasts. That's not humanity, that's objectification. Even if it was an attempt at humor, or an awkward side-stepping of an unexpected "battle", it would not make it acceptable to be so sexist. The fact that such a phrase has become a meme only makes it worse to repeat it.

<comment><USER4> _She hinted that she was a woman_

Which of course was really relevant to the discussion. Don't you get annoyed by people showing off when it's completely off the mark?

"Guys and gals, point me to the library to do X." \- "You know, there are transgender developers on the channel." \- "You don't say."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good post, thanks for bringing everyone's attention to it.

Quite often I imagine many choose not say anything, and things should be said. It is certainly not going to change the person who posted that. I doubt one can "grow" from that low of a level to become much, but it highlights an important topic for everyone else. I will certainly be more mindful and try to be more inclusive when talking to groups (I am guilty of using "guys" often even in mixed groups).

At the same time one can generalize this and ask "how should we deal with trolls in online communities?". Gross jokes, racist comments, the worst one can imagine pop up often in anonymous online communities. The joke about how the language is now "famous" was perhaps not a good joke but there is dose of truth. The language is more visible. One certainly could have logged into the channel even if it had 2 people in it and proceeded to make offensive comments, but the chance of that was just lower. Now it is higher. There will be worse comments seen as well. Sadly it is just a fact of human nature and interaction online.

Now to dig at it a little deeper. I wonder if the disgust and shock was aimed equally at the silent majority, who I suspect, the author feels should have condemned the insult publicly. Sometimes things are written between the lines. The expectation is that one a member of a group is attack I would want to be defended by other members or at least get private words of support from them. And that would make sense except that the practical means of dealing with a troll is to ban and ignore. Condemning things publicly, calling them names back, insulting, even openly discussing it while they are around, just fuels the fire for them. They mission is accomplished then. So everyone ignores them. But to the person who was attacked, it seems like the tacit majority agrees with the attacker or at least doesn't feel the attack warrants words of support.

<comment><USER6> > I wonder if the disgust and shock was aimed equally at the silent majority, > who I suspect, the author feels should have condemned the insult publicly.

It's IRC not a real world meeting. The silent majority is that way because they're not actually there and watching.

<comment><USER5> I understood that. There are even links to IRC logs. There is a delay. The idea is that they might not jump in right away but will say something later, maybe 10 minutes or hours later.

Like the "well it means we are famous now" comment is made 10 minutes or so later.

But yeah I guess if it is 5 hours later, it seems silly to comment on it. Especially since the author didn't express her indignation publicly in that channel, so those that might have defended her probably thought she shrugged it off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Among my friends, peers, and coworkers (generally 22-40), I've noticed many _women_ calling mixed groups - and even groups of women - "guys". In the same groups, in casual parlance, women will call other women "dude".

I think these terms are losing their gender-specificity and merely becoming a way to refer to a generic (non-sex/gender specified) person.

Of course, depending on your peer groups, and the level of formality in communication, your situation may be different. (i.e. if your entire peer- group is hypersensitive, politically-correct language police, feel free to modify.)

<comment><USER8> Or the circle you're working in is comprised of people from varying languages, countries, and backgrounds to whom "guys" might be at best ambiguous.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, ESL issues can contribute to this blurring as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Tania: Why Did We Open Source Our Farm Management Software? - <AUTHOR> http://tanibox.com/open-sourcing-tania/ <comment><USER2> Seems odd to announce this around the same time of the announcement that the code base is being deprecated.</comment>


An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one <comment><USER3> This article is misleading and gives a sensationist look at the actual earthquake risk in the NW. It was not well received among seismologists working in the NW. It is not dangerous to live in the NW. Be prepared, yes, but there's no reason to be fearful.

<comment><USER4> I disagree that it's not dangerous. The initial earthquake may only immediately kill a few thousand but the aftermath would be absolutely devastating. It would be the most catastrophic natural disaster and humanitarian crisis in the history of the United States. We know that it is coming and that it is overdue. It would be greater than 911, Katrina, and all the other crises that have occurred that we are still dealing with the aftermath of.

<comment><USER3> No, there's been plenty of worse disasters. The San Francisco 1906 earthquake, the Galveston hurricane, etc. The cumulative earthquake risk around Seattle is about 1/2 of California. I'm not a seismologist, but I was a geophysicist who knew many seismologists working in the NW. They uniformly thought it was sensationalist.

I'm not saying this isn't a major threat that must be prepared for, but it's not an apocalyptic or existential threat like this article makes it out to be.

<comment><USER4> According to ALL the scientists I've come across in my research, including ALL official statements from FEMA, the Cascadia Subduction zone M9+ earthquake would cause the greatest natural disaster and humanitarian crisis in American history. The New Yorker article is sensationalist but that doesn't mean that FEMA is wrong about the catastrophic aftermath of this earthquake - <USER2> aren't.

<comment><USER5> I don't mean to downplay your research or stance, but the poster above you mentioned a bit about their credentials. Do you work professionally in a related field that has caused you to talk to/read other scientists regarding this issue?

Without context, "all the scientists I've come across" could be 1 or 200.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I work remotely and was planning on moving to Seattle next year. The more I research about the Cascadia Subduction zone and the overdue M9 earthquake, the more I am hesitant to want to live in Seattle. I honestly don't think it's worth moving to somewhere that is anticipating the worst natural disaster in the history of the USA. I think it's beautiful and a great city but it's not a risk I'm willing to take. Especially since it seems the region is extraodonarily underprepared.

<comment><USER6> Ken Murphy was the FEMA director at the time. He said that if the Cascadia Fault quake hits "Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast." That's pretty much all you need to know. Insurance probably won't cover quake damage without prohibitive additional charges, so even if you get out you'll lose everything. I've not gone after some Bay Area opportunities I had because of this, and because my wife is terrified of the fires in California.

That said, if you still want to chance it I researched and it is possible to commute into Seattle from east of I5, just not fun.

<comment><USER7> It's all some degree of trade-offs.

Extreme winters in the north and north east, hurricanes along the East and Caribbean coasts, tornadoes in the middle of the US, extreme heat in the south west.

The fires have always been seasonal, but combine that with old infrastructure and poor maintenance, some of it is man made so can be corrected.

The earthquake potential, while could be hugely devastating, happens once every 30 years for medium ones and once every 100 or so years for the big ones. That's very different from the risks the rest of the country deals with every year.

<comment><USER8> Virginia seems to get a little of everything, but not enough to be an issue.

It gets snow but it's a long way from the extreme winters you get in the north east. Hurricanes turn into heavy rains when you leave the coast. Earthquake's are hardly a concern outside the risk of minor property damage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Strange to see this marked as 2015. I watched a documentary in (I think) 2004 that predicted the same (or worse) outcome, but attributed it to the collapse of a volcano on one of the Canary Islands because its structure contains vertical panels of water and is thus unstable. Supposedly, half the volcano will fall into the sea, creating a huge tidal wave which will destroy the entire east coast of the US and 20km inland.

Hey, turns out I remembered correctly. [https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk/2004/a...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk/2004/aug/10/science.spain)

<comment><USER10> The Grand Canary supervolcano would have a hard time destroying the Northwestern US, which is on the other side of the continent.

<comment><USER9> Ah, yes, I misread. Interesting nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was surprised FEMA only estimates 13,000 deaths from this cataclysmic earthquake. I wonder how accurate that is.

<comment><USER12> Earthquakes aren't necessarily highly lethal events:

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

Countries that are more exposed to Tsunamis have it worse.

<comment><USER13> To be clear, there will be tsunamis: this is potentially a Tohoku-magnitude event closer to the coastline, but the Northwest ocean-front coastline is relatively thinly populated.</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding the Enigma machine from "The Imitation Game" with 30 Lines of Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://red-badger.com/blog/2015/02/23/understanding-the-enigma-machine-with-30-lines-of-ruby-star-of-the-2014-film-the-imitation-game/ <comment><USER2> The movie "Enigma" from 2001 is better.

Here's the NSA's official history of Enigma and the bombe: [https://www.nsa.gov/about/_files/cryptologic_heritage/public...](https://www.nsa.gov/about/_files/cryptologic_heritage/publications/wwii/solving_enigma.pdf)

They credit the Polish cryptanalysts who first cracked the Enigma and built the first bombe. Turing and Welchman at Bletchley Park came up with improvements which made it much more effective. Building the new machines was outsourced to the British Tabulating Machine Company.

Then the Germans switched from a three-rotor Enigma to a four-rotor, which the British machines could not solve and increased the effort required by a factor of 26. So the US Navy had National Cash Register build much faster machines. Hundreds of them.

Four wheels was about the limit for a portable rotor machine where the key presses advanced the wheels. The key pressure required for even a 3-wheel Enigma was very high. (I've typed on one, when one was at Stanford. The key travel is huge, almost an inch.) So that was as complex as the ciphers used by German mobile units (ships, trucks) ever got.

For fixed installations, there was the German Lorenz machine, which had 12 wheels. That required a completely different approach to crack. Bombes were a brute-force solution. The Colossus machine used electronics and a more statistical approach. But that's another story.

<comment><USER3> > They credit the Polish cryptanalysts who first cracked the Enigma and built > the first bombe. Turing and Welchman at Bletchley Park came up with > improvements which made it much more effective.

Not entirely. The Poles realised that the German keying procedure was flawed; they were doubly-encrypting the start of messages which made key recovery extremely easy.

They (the Germans,) stopped doing this relatively early on, so the key recovery devised by Turing (and then expanded on by the Americans) was a completely different attack. [1]

[1] [http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/bombe/](http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/bombe/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also known as the enigma machine from that war! What a bizarre appropriation to make.

(I mean I get it, the idea is to link the title to the recent film and make the article somehow more current and clickable. Maybe it is a cultural thing but to me it sounds jarring and crass)

<comment><USER5> Actually, the article only talks about the Enigma machine featured in the movie, not all the different models (with different rotor counts, etc.) that the Germans used throughout the war. The title might sound linkbaity, but it's accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a minor problem with the implementation. The rotors and reflector always turned a letter into a different letter because of the wiring. It's possible for the shuffling of the alphabet to leave a letter in place.

This is a minor flaw for the explanation but the result was that a letter could never be enciphered to itself on Enigma. And this fact was exploited because it meant that crib positions could be eliminated.

<comment><USER7> That property is caused by the reflector, rotors themselves can shuffle randomly. The way the reflector is built in the implementation is from pairs of consecutive (unique) letters of the shuffled alphabet (getting a half of the reflector) and then merging the inversion.

IMHO it's correct.

<comment><USER6> Hmm. Rereading the code I believe you are correct. I'm not strong in Ruby and had misunderstood what this was doing:

        Reflector = Hash[*('A'..'Z').to_a.shuffle]
        Reflector.merge!(Reflector.invert)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > I recently watched the film "The Imitation Game" and it's brilliant despite > Keira Knightley's failed attempt at a posh British accent.

Really?

Born: March 26, 1985 (age 29), Teddington, London, United Kingdom

Is the problem that her British accent wasn't posh enough?

<comment><USER6> Correct.

<comment><USER9> Why would you think Joan Clarke was any posher than Keira Knightly? She was the daughter of a vicar...

<comment><USER6> Listen to her speak: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB2e9R7bXCk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB2e9R7bXCk)

<comment><USER10> Is that posher or just more old fashioned? Serious question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did something similar during a Software Craftsmanship conference at Bletchley Park a couple of years ago.

BP have a "paper" enigma machine that they use for school children and we pair programmed an implementation in a couple of hours. (no plug board IIRC)

Nice programming exercise and a great place to visit, although if you go don't forget to visit the computer museum (BP and the computer museum have fallen out so access to the museum is a bit more awkward than it used to be).

</comment><comment><USER12> Did the British troops _have_ an enigma machine during the war? If so couldn't they just intercept the arrangement of rotors each day and decode messages as they came in?

<comment><USER13> The problem is intercepting the codebook. If they had the machine and could somehow intercept the codes then yes.

<comment><USER5> According to Wikipedia [1], the codebooks were printed in red water-soluble ink. If a German ship wasn't already full of water by the time the Allies gained access to it, any German soldier could simply splash water (or blood) on the codebook, rendering it useless.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine#Details](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine#Details)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Y'know, I program in Ruby. I paid my dues in CoffeeScript. And I also studied computer science.

And sometimes Knuth-style pseudocode beats jerking off in Ruby. This is one of those times.

<comment><USER10> Hahahah</comment></comment>


YC's summer update - <AUTHOR> http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2008/08/ycs-summer-update.html <comment><USER2> A demo day in Boston, and then everyone flies to San Francisco for two more days of demos? Wow!

</comment><comment><USER3> Spolsky is a _star_?

<comment><USER4> I find it amusing you singled him out. Of the three, he's without a doubt the most well known.

<comment><USER5> Huh? I'd think that Mitch Kapor is far, far more well-known. I can go up to my parents and talk about Mitch Kapor and they'll say "Oh, the Lotus 1-2-3 guy that used to do transcendental meditation." If I mention Joel Spolsky, they'll be like "Who?"

<comment><USER6> I know exactly who Spolsky is but I've never heard of Mitch Kapor. At all.

<comment><USER7> I think this is very much a generational thing. Spolsky writes a trendy blog that anyone reading Hacker News will be familiar with. Kapor, like Gates, is one of the titans of the early PC world. But that also means his most relevant work (Chandler being only famous for failing in an interesting way) happened before many of the readers here were born.

<comment><USER8> Another question, how relevant is Kapor to our daily work TODAY? I don't happen to use Lotus Notes, but I have learned a thing or two from Joel's articles. That is why I remember his name and keep reading his blog.

<comment><USER5> Do you use Microsoft Office or any other integrated office suite? Lotus 1-2-3 was the first major integrated business software to run on the IBM PC.

<comment><USER8> I don't mean to diminish it's achievement, it is just that it does not play a big role in my life. I use Open Office maybe 20 times a year to write some business letters. That's it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Recipe for Flies and Frogs - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/a-recipe-for-flies-and-frogs/ <comment><USER2> Evolution is spontaneous generation over a long time scale.</comment>


Internet Society: U.S. ban of TikTok and WeChat is direct attack on the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.internetsociety.org/news/statements/2020/internet-society-u-s-administration-ban-of-tiktok-and-wechat-is-a-direct-attack-on-the-internet/ <comment><USER2> "If the Administration wanted to support an open Internet, it would have avoided this route; rather, it would have first tried to understand how such actions may affect the Internet and conducted an impact assessment."

If only the Internet Society had followed this advice before trying to sell the org domain.</comment>


How to Be Less Stupid - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/04/how-to-be-less-stupid/

<comment><USER2> This doesn't make much sense at all...

<comment><USER2> Oh sorry, I didn't realize this was spam...

<comment><USER3> How is this spam? Seems like a great article to me.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Just launched my product on PH (+80.000 course catalog). Any feedback? - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/courseroot-share <comment><USER2> So you got to PH#1 the first time with your product v1, now worked a year and try again. What are you hoping to achieve? You already had it the first time, what is it that you hope to gain this time that you didn't get the first time?

50% to charity sounds like a lot to me. Makes me see a risk your service goes down at some point in time. If anything I'd rather see a lower number and know more money goes into the product. That might just mean your service is not for me, there might be plenty who see it as a unique selling point. I see it as a risk.

Other then that, well, it is still the same thing as last time right?

</comment><comment><USER3> Make a proper Show HN post and then ask for the feedback.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everybody,

I just launched a new version of my product that I have been grinding away for a long time on PH.

I'd love to see you there in the comments. If you have feedback or would like to share your thoughts, that would be amazing.

All the best,

Valentijn</comment>