Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says - <AUTHOR> https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-turkey-security-socialmedia/turkey-determined-to-control-social-media-platforms-erdogan-says-idUKKBN2425Y4 <comment><USER2> In a dictatorship, cracking down on social media is a no brainer. But I think social media undermines democracies as well.

Social media vastly amplifies loud minorities. Democracy assumes that the majority of people are reasonable, so majority rule will also be reasonable. Loud minorities undermine majority rule. Loud minorities have always existed, but social media is now amplifying them to the point of obscuring what the majority of the country actually wants. This is why we can have an election outcome that no one in the media predicted.

Add to that the fact that social media is highly game-able and scalable, and you have small groups of people working against the majority of the country.

Social media is also a prime playground for international enemies.

In that light, I'm moving away from the idea that all social media should be allowed, and seeing actions like this as something worth exploring. I hate imposing restrictions, but social media is a strange and unbelievably influential paradigm, which needs to be handled "like a weapon instead of some toy".

<comment><USER3> I think we're encountering a fundamental conflict between an unregulated free market and a digital economy that doesn't have any notion of scarcity or cost. The old paradigm just doesn't fit. And the result is that a handful of tech employees and billionaires can wield outsized influence over the dominant media channels and public forums of the entire world without any democratic input or regulatory oversight. The fact that anyone on the so-called Left supports the rights of these corporations to wield that influence by appealing to laissez-faire principles -- ("they're private companies, they can do what the want!", "If you don't like Twitter's policies you can go start your own site!") -- is mind-boggling.

I think we need social media to operate as a non-profit like Wikipedia, and I think drastic action is the only way to do so. Building alternatives won't work. A for-profit model is just not compatible with the nature of social media.

<comment><USER4> so how does that work? i cannot think of a workable solution short of an end to the world wide web, and the beginning of a system of national internets and data ports (as in, places you send your data to to export them from one country and import them to another).

otherwise, the democratic oversight will just be whatever the u.s can manage.

the internet is already falling apart; i notice many u.s media sites are inaccessible from europe. i guess national internets are less painful in europe, where almost every country has its own language, than in the anglosphere, where there are many smaller countries that use english.

it solves many problems - it puts an end to cyberattacks, for instance. but is it _right_? i doubt it.

<comment><USER5> >it solves many problems - it puts an end to cyberattacks, for instance. but is it right? i doubt it.

I think it's right. Countries have sovereignty over their physical territory and they ought to have sovereignty over their digital territory, that's the basis of any democracy and self-determination.

Of course it produces awful results in Turkey because Erdogan is an autocrat, and autocrats use power to enact dumb policies, in this case censoring something because his family was insulted.

However in democracies it is necessary to not be defenseless and to maintain values. Here in Europe I've always felt that we're pretty much exposed in the digital sphere to either American norms due to sheer size, and nowadays more and more to negative campaigns by countries like Russia and China as they've learned to weaponize cyberspace.

<comment><USER6> I think cultural defensiveness is a strange phenomenon. The musical tradition that grew into jazz survived centuries of the most brutal slavery, but now it's the basis of most of what we hear in our day-to-day. Ultimately, cultural values that work will win out, and art that is beautiful will shine through. No amount of political pressure, violence, boundaries and borders can change that. You can't mandate that people should buy bratwurst, or read Horace, or go to church - but equally, if your values are good values, they can only be suppressed for some time, before they spring up in new forms and new places.

In China, they are conducting a great experiment in suppressing and controlling culture. Perhaps it will work - perhaps not, but I think you could only really achieve such a goal with such means, and moreover, I think such means are far more insidious and corrupting than any kind of foreign influence. Sheltered culture becomes irrelevant, then idiotic, then it becomes something only idiots and fossils can believe in.

<comment><USER5> > You can't mandate that people should buy bratwurst, or read Horace

of course you can. Do you know why the Breton language in France is reduced to 200k speakers and the Académie française gets to determine how French is spoken? Because the state stamped out every regional language during the creation of the Republic, and that was that.

Are the native cultures of the new world almost gone because they're worse cultures? No, it's because they were defenseless. Did Chrisitanity and Islam spread because they "worked?" No, they were spread by sword or settlement.

China's experiment isn't new, it's not even an experiment really. how do you think the Romanization of large parts of the old world happened, or the Russification of much of Eastern Europe? Is Finland 'idiotic' for defending its culture? Are they actually just living in a worse culture and haven't realised it yet?

What a terrible might makes right logic.

<comment><USER7> >Because the state stamped out every regional language during the creation of the Republic, and that was that.

They had signs on the walls in Breton schools telling that "it's forbidden to spit on the ground, or speak Breton".

<comment><USER8> Malaysia, a former British colony, stopped teaching English in schools for the past 2 generations out of local pride.

Ironically, the generation older than that can still speak English, and roll their eyes when they have to translate for their adult kids who can't engage in tourism or trade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's all too interesting what is happening in the region. Some say he's going back Ottoman empire with his entire navy and claiming pieces of Cyprus to the disliking of Cyprus and Greece. While also performing enormous military exercises under the guise of Mavi Vatan, which also bears symbolic reference to their history.

Meanwhile Erdogan is set on keeping the steady flow of immigrants coming for as long as he's the gate holder, the EU will bow to many of Erdogans demands.

Concurrently Russia is said be rerunning the USSR book and is desperate in acquiring more territory. For as long as I've lived I can recall the USA being somewhat the voice of reason in these situations but USA is too occupied with their own stuff currently.

I think theirs trouble on the horizon as Erdogan and Puttins position become more and more unsustainable with the citizens of said countries being more and more unhappy with them.

<comment><USER10> I don't think Russia is 'desperate in acquiring more territory'. If anything its desperate to not lose more of them. The Cold War was ended in negotiations with the Soviet Union that stipulated that no NATO expansion towards Russia would happen. But then it did, and again, and again. Not to mention that the US basically broke all the missile treaties as well.

Belarus is staring to realize this and look West, so did Georgia and the Ukraine. Russia is desperate not to lose all influence over these.

They were desperate to keep the Crimea. But to be fair Crimea wasn't even part of Ukraine until 1960 when Khrushchev wanted to increase is own power base. Not really Ukrainians who live there and the region was never much for Ukrainian nationalism.

Russia is desperate not to get parceled up by China, Europe and the US. Russia is declining power, its population is collapsing, it has major brain drain, half of the Russian life outside of Russia. Putin is good at seeming strong but the long term battle is basically lost already.

> USA being somewhat the voice of reason

You mean the voice with the most financial and military power that told others what do? Are you rally so naive to think that 'reasonableness' is what made these things happen?

In the 90s the Russian were sticking mad as hell about this stuff, they just didn't have the power to do anything about it. In the last 15 years the have learn that they can, so they do.

<comment><USER11> > The Cold War was ended in negotiations with the Soviet Union that stipulated > that no NATO expansion towards Russia would happen

There was no such negotiations with binding promises made public aside from interwebs rumors, frequently reposted on RT/Sputnik/etc. The end of Cold War was USSR unilaterally dissolving by agreement between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

Furthermore, Yeltsin publicly said that eastern europe can join NATO if they wish. The only request was that there would be no nuclear weapon moved to new NATO members. And there were talks about limiting conventional weapons. That's why current NATO forces in Baltic states and Poland are "rotational" rather than permanent.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/18/world/yeltsin-now- seems-r...](https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/18/world/yeltsin-now-seems-ready- to-accept-nato-at-his-borders.html)

> In the 90s the Russian were sticking mad as hell about this stuff, they just > didn't have the power to do anything about it. In the last 15 years the have > learn that they can, so they do.

As an ex-USSR citizen, Russia was damn friendly in early 90s. Russian SSR (separate from USSR) supported Baltic states during January events of 1991. Russian army was rather swiftly removed. Separation was rather smooth thanks to mutual understanding. Things started to change in late 90s though. Not sure where the braking point was.

<comment><USER10> > There was no such negotiations with binding promises made public aside from > interwebs rumors

I have heard from multiple cold war scholars some that were in government at that time that they promised this to Gorbachev. That said, it was never formally ratified.

This is just one example, another one is the non-adjustment of borders without agreemnt. But this was broken in the 90s when the US created Kosvo.

The missile treaties were broken by Bush.

> The end of Cold War was USSR unilaterally dissolving

Arguably the Cold War ended with the treaties between the Soviet Union and the US before it devolved. That is at least what US negotiators believed and you can listen interviews with them.

They are actually quite angry that people now say that the cold war ended because the Soviet Union collapsed.

> Furthermore, Yeltsin publicly said that eastern europe can join NATO if they > wish.

Yeltsin was weak and had to agree to a lot of stuff that he didn't like. The Russian elites certainty never wanted the NATO to expand east.

> As an ex-USSR citizen, Russia was damn friendly in early 90s.

They are incredibly friendly right at the point in the history where they are weakest. Lenin was so friendly he signed over half of European Russia.

<comment><USER11> > I have heard from multiple cold war scholars some that were in government at > that time that they promised this to Gorbachev. That said, it was never > formally ratified.

And there was a lot of pressure to not separate from USSR up to coup of 1991. Especially from Western europe. Looking at our politicians from early 90s memoirs, Gorbachev broke those unwritten agreements with West by using military in January events of 1991.

> This is just one example, another one is the non-adjustment of borders > without agreemnt. But this was broken in the 90s when the US created Kosvo.

Wasn't non-adjustment of borders some agreement in Helsinki in mid-70s?

> Arguably the Cold War ended with the treaties between the Soviet Union and > the US before it devolved. That is at least what US negotiators believed and > you can listen interviews with them.

Got any examples? Because

> Yeltsin was weak and had to agree to a lot of stuff that he didn't like. The > Russian elites certainty never wanted the NATO to expand east.

While Yeltsin was rather weak (just like any politician in 90s in ex- USSR/Warsaw pact), the main difference was split between democractical vs imperial powers. Russian SSR government was were pro-democracy people congregated while pan-USSR structures were held by imperialists. When USSR dissolved, it took some time for imperialists to regroup and take over Russian Federation (ex Russian SSR) structures.

> They are incredibly friendly right at the point in the history where they > are weakest. Lenin was so friendly he signed over half of European Russia.

Lenin only signed over non-ethnically-Russian territories of tsarist Russia. Tsarist Russia was called "jail of nations" for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every time I see news like this I can't help but wonder what would happen if federated social media becomes mainstream. All these attempts to regulate social media generally revolve around there being a "platform", it being a company, it caring about profits, it having a legal department etc. It all falls apart spectacularly if you frame social media as something intertwined with the internet itself, with no central authority whatsoever.

<comment><USER13> We see that the convenience of centralized social media is more valuable than the autonomy of federated social media. This is because the centralized social media is easily accessible, practically free and tolerably open regarding opposing viewpoints.

Solve for the equilibrium. We would expect federated social media to increase in popularity when the convenience of centralized social media is jeopardized. I believe in Russia, where people don't feel safe voicing their opinions publicly on centralized social media, ad hoc social networks have appeared on safe chat platforms like Telegram to take their place.

<comment><USER12> I have some ideas about making social media decentralized while keeping global search possible. They need practical testing though, which is something I haven't gotten around to yet.

> I believe in Russia, where people don't feel safe voicing their opinions > publicly on centralized social media, ad hoc social networks have appeared > on safe chat platforms like Telegram to take their place.

I'm Russian. Today is the last day of 7-day voting for the very controversial constitution amendments that would grant Putin two additional 6-year terms, among other things. My both VK and Twitter feeds are chock-full of posts about this. People are posting about how asinine these amendments are. People are posting about incessant violations in the voting process itself. People are posting pictures of their ballots. The feeling that people are afraid to publicly voice their opinions is certainly not there.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for explaining this to me, I am clearly misinformed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is a reason why we're seeing the rise of the autocrats (Erdogan, Putin, Jiping, Orban, Bolsonaro, Trump, Duterte, Kaczyński, ...): it is because openness and democracy triumphed before. And it won because previous autocrats failed.

Edit: my point is: starting in the late 70's, authoritarian regimes failed miserably before all over the world, therefore there's no reason to believe they'll succeed thist time. Remember Marx explaining Charles Bonaparte: history happens twice, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.

The fundamental fact is that, in the long run, autocrats are very incompetent and make a lot of mistakes, mostly by hubris and because they're surrounded by yes-men that hide them the truth. They become detached from facts, they think they can control facts until facts control them.

Erdogan's strong rule is a drug that Turkey will have to pay very dearly to get rid off.

<comment><USER15> > it is because openness and democracy triumphed before

How do you think openness and democracy triumphing cause the rise of autocrats? Are you referring to Plato's five regimes theory, where each type of government degenerates into a different government, in a cycle?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes)

<comment><USER14> > How do you think openness and democracy triumphing cause the rise of > autocrats?

Sorry, I expressed myself badly. It doesn't "cause" it just provides a contrast that makes this look as different of what was there before.

If Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East and East Asia were still under the authoritarian rulers of the Cold War era, these new autocrats wouldn't be a novelty.

My point is that autocrats failed before and all those places tried democracy. It succeeded in most of them, but a few want to go back to something that is not viable anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what some mid- to long-term consequences of Turkey slipping into dictatorship will be for NATO as a whole.

It's clear Turkey is drifting away from the values held by the alliance members.

I'm so glad they haven't been accepted into the EU. That would be a disaster.

<comment><USER17> Nothing.

Just like how Poland and Hungary are EU members and they are walking their own way not giving a f about anything, rewriting the constitutions and laws as they wish

<comment><USER18> Bulgaria is another notable outlier. Formal EU member, democracy by constitution, government officials relatively well respected in Brussels. Inside - autocratic regime with no division of powers, facade institutions serving the interest of the political oligarchy, no authentic political parties representing the interests of the wider population.

<comment><USER19> I remember about 10-15 years ago, I went there during their Liberation Day. There was a TV on, and I could understand most of what was said, due to having visited Bulgaria many times before. The guy was standing on a podium, between two eagles. First they played Flight of the Valkyries. Then the guy started speaking openly, and to wild cheering form the crowds, about how he wanted to send Turks and Gipsys back to the countries they came from. I was just, "Holy hell, this is on public TV in Bulgaria? What YEAR is this???" I had to ask the shop keeper. He told me the show was live.

<comment><USER18> That was probably Volen Siderov, the founder of the first nationalist political party after the fall of communism. His "Ataka" party gained some serious momentum during 2005-2009, but is now largely defunct, with very little support, partly thanks to his inconsistent and outrightly rude behaviour. They always held rallies on the Liberation Day during those years and many Bulgarians were seeing "Ataka" as the only authentic party among all other creations of political engineering under the guidance of former state security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's easy to condemn this from afar sitting in a super-power democracy, in the ivory tower of free speech. Countries like Turkey, Syria, Egypt etc. are in the middle of geo-political chess games with propaganda coming from Russia, militant groups, militias, rebels etc.

Look at what happened with the Arab spring in Egypt... after the leaders fell, even worse parties and fundamentalist strongmen came in. It was lauded as a democratic revolution until the muslim brotherhood came in. Same shit happened in Syria -- now it's devastated.

There is so much outcry over TikTok being adopted in masse within the United States -- this isn't really that different. Facebook invests a lot of resources fighting fake news in the US -- I doubt it puts any efforts into propaganda (nor has the ability) that is spread in a place like Turkey.

The way to think about these countries behavior is -- imagine foreign governments were sending the KKK $100 of millions along with weapons across your borders. We got a taste of 1% of this with Russian interference -- but it is nothing compared to what happens in the middle east.

</comment><comment><USER21> A little extra context missing from the Reuters article:

> "Do you see why we oppose social media like YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and > so on?" Erdogan said.

> "Turkey is not a banana republic. We will snub those who snub this country's > executive and judicial bodies," he stated.

> "We will chase those who attack a baby...," Erdogan said, referring to an > insult directed at his daughter Esra Albayrak and his son-in-law, Treasury > and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak upon their announcement of their newborn > baby.

[https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/president-erdogan-vows- soc...](https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/president-erdogan-vows-social-media- controls-156189)

</comment><comment><USER22> It's so weird that people here usually want to regulate social media, but when some other government that doesn't share your worldview does it, it's all of a sudden oppressive.

You say the wrong thing online in the UK or Germany, the police come knocking. Everyone always thinks their reason for censorship is exceptional because their beliefs are the one-true virtuous beliefs in the universe.

<comment><USER23> It's because openness is a luxury and status symbol. Ohh look how open and so much better I am, and how I'm composed and stoic enough to tolerate all this dissent. But when you take away wealth and security then luxury and status are the first things to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> _Everyone_ seems to want to control social media platforms these days, it just gets dressed up differently depending on how the reporting party feelings about you, after which a journalist will tack on a headline finishing with "... (And That's a Good Thing)" in a way which will never not remind me of a certain Twilight Zone episode.

</comment><comment><USER25> I feel like the more a head of state is punched from below without doing anything, the better he or she is. I think each insult that runs down the back is a great way to measure the worse paths and timelines not taken, a physical manifestation of the ghost of Christmas Future. It's also a great measurement tool because oftentimes things we do are not within our control, but the things we don't do are, because we choose not to do them.

Greatness is a small number of key visionary decisions, and not a bunch of little reactive ones.

</comment><comment><USER26> _He said social media companies would be forced to appoint representatives in Turkey to respond to legal requests, which he said were currently ignored._

Presumably they will ignore this request as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ok I misunderstood "determined" to have its meaning closer to "discovered", and then subsequently misunderstood "turkey" to mean the animal. Definitely made me do a double take

</comment><comment><USER28> I doubt Turkey is a large enough market to successfully string arm the American companies into playing along; the question is if they can block places like Twitter and develop their own successfully locally.

</comment><comment><USER29> And I am determined to control the moon.

Currently I have settled for a room-darkening shade.

</comment><comment><USER30> "... pressing ahead with government plans after he said his family was insulted online"

That's how you frame your readers. The author doesn't know whether there's causal relation between the possible insult and the plans to control the social platforms. But this is how media tricks the readers in thinking so.

<comment><USER31> > The author doesn't know whether there's causal relation between the possible > insult and the plans to control the social platforms.

I don't know--seems pretty clear to me.

"Do you see why we oppose social media like YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, etc...?" Erdogan asked in reference to the alleged insults of his family members. "It is imperative that these channels are brought under control."

Again in reference to the insults:

"We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control."

<comment><USER30> In your quotations there's nothing about any insult to his family. That means a causal relation isn't yet proven.

<comment><USER31> He was being asked directly about the insults.

>"We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control."

The "similar attacks", and the "immoral behavior" are direct references to insults against him and his family on social media.

These are from the Al Jazeera translation of the press conference if you don't trust the AP:

"Erdogan said investigations were under way against those who "attacked" his family by "abusing a newborn".

"We will keep chasing these cowards who attack a family and the values they believe represented by them through a baby."

"We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control."

Please stop being deliberately obtuse.

<comment><USER30> No need to be insulting yourself. I was asking for evidence of the personal attacks and you listed them.

The AP should have added then that a newborn was insulted instead of referring to "his family". Someone who insults a baby must be quiet foolish. There seems to be a heating debate! At least Turkey got some balls and they talk openly about Adrenochrome in the main stream news, can't be that bad their censorship. In other countries and on Youtube you get deleted and insulted when talking about child abuse. It's easy to point on other people and label them censorship when you should instead point the finger on your own media.

<comment><USER31> >No need to be insulting yourself. I was asking for evidence of the personal attacks and you listed them.

There was already plenty of evidence if you actually read the quote the and setup that it was the answer to a question about the attack.

>At least Turkey got some balls and they talk openly about Adrenochrome in the main stream news, can't be that bad their censorship.

If you're talking about the fictional drug, there's a movie and a TV show that openly talk about it. If you're talking about the chemical substance, you can buy it in the US.

If you're talking about the bullshit pizza gate conspiracy, the mainstream news mentions it when it's newsworthy. Like when someone shoots a hole in the floor of a pizza restaurant. But most of the time they don't talk about for the same reason they don't talk about lizard people or the tooth fairy.

Go ahead and talk about it though. I guarantee you the government won't censor you and throw you in jail the way they will in Turkey if you insult a government official.

<comment><USER30> It's not fictional by no means. There's sufficient evidence that Nazi-Germany researched about Adrenochrome that make it appear fictional to me. I would be careful in neglecting its existence and its use. You don't know who you protect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> At least he is frank. US is doing that for ages.

<comment><USER33> What are you even talking about? Elaborate please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Once your cross the line from democracy to dictator, everything becomes legit in your eyes

<comment><USER35> as a European I wonder if 2021 will be the year we read the same headline about Poland and Hungary - the latter is well on its way

<comment><USER36> The former is about to reach an important fork next week. If the ruling party keep the presidential seat, they have three more years of basically unchecked power. If they lose the seat, the checks and balances are back on the menu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Obligatory "the world will be better off the sooner we all adopt ActivityPub" comment.

</comment><comment><USER38> Happens a lot in the west too. Reddit, Twitter and Facebook come to mind.

<comment><USER39> "he's a hell of a leader, and he's a tough man, he's a strong man"

expect to see parallels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Advertisement for Urbit.

<comment><USER37> Urbit is the TempleOS of decentralized social networking.</comment></comment>


Teachers are expected to remain politically neutral. These ones say they can't - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/10/14/teachers-are-expected-to-remain-politically-neutral-these-teachers-of-the-year-say-they-cant/ <comment><USER2> There is a cultural slide towards enforcement of piety in society. Nowadays it is not Christian piety but a new kind of piety derived from centuries old, noble liberal values.

Schoolteachers are, by the nature of their job, in the business of telling kids what to think, and so they are among the most likely to get into the piety enforcement game once it becomes popular.</comment>


Bob Iger Thought He Was Leaving on Top. Now, He's Fighting for Disney's Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/business/media/disney-ceo-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> Weird article. It kind of feels like a puff piece to rehabilitate Bob Iger's image. He's now being touted as the savior of Disney, not the person who nearly killed Disney then walked away (or maybe was forced to walk away).

In reality, Iger overextended Disney and really shot it in the foot. He made it into this extremely brittle company that was probably banking on the Disney parks and Marvel movies to pull it through. They spent way too much money to buy Fox, which is what is probably putting them in a very weak financial position now.

Regardless of what you think of the Star Wars sequels, they are not the big draw they once were and the brand is not doing well. If they are lucky the Mandalorian can help to build the brand up if they don't force the focus to be on baby yoda. The parks even focused on the new trilogy rather than the original trilogy which is what most people like the best. Even the parks have shown signs of problems before the virus, they kept cranking the prices up, and it felt like they had cranked them too high and might be suffering attendance problems. There were lots of deals going on right before the virus lock downs, which is not the norm.

It kind of feels like what's really happening is that Disney realized that even though Iger put them in this position, Chapek doesn't have the skill to lead them out when the lock down ends. So the board would rather go with the devil they know, then go with an unknown in Chapek.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry but I can't take a critique of a CEO seriously when you're talking about whether some series should focus on Baby Yoda, that is so far away from the level of importance to analyze Bob Iger's career. If you look at any of the key performance indicators for Disney they've performmed phenomenally under Iger.

If you look at what Disney does though - theme parks, Sports coverage, News, And Movies. Let's run through that list: Theme Parks - completely closed due to Coronavirus, unlikely to open for months. Sports Coverage (ESPN and the like) same story. News Coverage - under considerable stress because advertising has fallen through the floor. Movies - Cinemas are closed and production on everything has stopped.

Disney is a Carnival Cruises level of exposure to Coronavirus. And you can try and claim Disney was failing before this, but their financials disagree- their revenue from Parks, Experiences and Products was up 6% in their latest financial report (and operating income up 11%). I would really encourage you to look at Iger's based on the performance of the company rather than your gut feeling about Disney's content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On mobile, can I get an outline link?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.is/nZfJz](https://archive.is/nZfJz)</comment></comment>


Apple and Taxes: What the New York Times Missed - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120430/apple-and-taxes-what-the-new-york-times-missed/?mod=tweet <comment><USER2> Good for Apple. They're doing what any rational person or company should do - move business to where taxes are lowest. States like California and Illinois are doing their best to drive out business (and jobs).</comment>


Is there any REAL alternative to Firebase? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Flutter/comments/dzgj41/is_there_any_real_alternative_to_firebase/ <comment><USER2> CosmosDB + Azure SignalR maybe? I'm not experienced with Firebase, though.

It might not be such a good option if you are not willing to get your hands dirty with some backend code.</comment>


Proposal to split up Qualcomm is patently absurd - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2951117/opensource-subnet/proposal-to-split-up-qualcomm-is-patently-absurd.html?nsdr=true

<comment><AUTHOR> The proposed breakup of Qualcomm by activist investment firm Jana Partners, as reported by the Wall Street Journal this week, would be a blunder of biblical proportions. The equivalent of Delilah cutting off Samson's hair while he slept, dividing Qualcomm into separately traded semiconductor and technology licensing businesses would produce two companies of lesser value than the former whole.</comment>


Dave McClure says that his liquid net worth is less than $1M - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/How-much-is-Dave-McClure-worth

<comment><AUTHOR> to make angel investments in the U.S., you need to be an "accredited investor." this requires that the investor is:

"a natural person who has individual net worth, or joint net worth with the person's spouse, that exceeds $1 million at the time of the purchase"

or

"a natural person with income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with a spouse exceeding $300,000 for those years and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year"

source: <http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm></comment>


A list of movies about hacking - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/k4m4/movies-for-hackers <comment><USER2> This doesn't appear to be so much a curated list of much-watch movies so much as a list of all movies about hacking ever.

Here is my curated list of movies ever hacker and cyberpunk enthusiast must watch:

* Sneakers

* Ghost in the Shell

* Tron

Why is Tron there? Because the screenwriter loosely based the character around her husband. Who was her husband? Alan Kay. Tron's protagonist is Alan Kay.

<comment><USER3> I think WarGames really should be on the list. It's old, yes, but it did influence a lot of us that were in that first generation of kids growing up with computers at home (though not many homes). It definitely captures a moment of time worth thinking about.

My two bits. (I very much agree with Tron.)

<comment><USER4> Definitely. It was one of my early influences for looking into both AI and information security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Needs "The Conversation". A near perfect movie about surveillance, that doesn't feature a single computer.

<comment><USER6> It has "Enemy of the State", its spiritual sequel (with Gene Hackman playing an almost identical character). But I agree, The Conversation should be on there, too; I have to admit it's a better movie, even though I love Will Smith.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seeing this list inspired me to write about the list I keep for the books I read, many of them cyberpunk/scifi. After reading so many of these types of books, you can't help notice their elements in other media.

It's interesting in seeing the print inspirations for many of these movies. The term "The Matrix" was first coined in William Gibson's Neuromancer and considered to be the seminal Cyberpunk novel, even predating Ghost in the Shell.

Definitely a must read for any Cyberpunk fan!

<comment><USER8> Just read Neuromancer this summer. One of the benefits of renting random people's places are the libraries you run across; that was a great read (though somehow disturbing, mystical/mind blowing, and hollow inducing all at the same time).

<comment><USER7> The two other books in the series (Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive) are both great as well, but I found that the first had the most magic.

In the same vein, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is great as well. Its essentially a parody of cyberpunk but hilariously well written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was very pleased to see The Italian Job make the list.

Hacking is about understanding, optimizing, and manipulating systems. One real-world analogue of a system is a Rube Goldberg machine; the dramatic analogue of a Rube Goldberg machine is a heist flick.

I'd add the Ocean's Eleven remake as an approachable introduction to the genre, and Kubrick's The Killing for vintage noir awesomeness. And maybe The Last Seduction as a curveball.

</comment><comment><USER10> Jeez, some of those movies are dreadful, and there's almost nothing on the list from before 1990.

1954 - Gog (robots that look like robots and not people in metal suits)

1957 - Desk Set (non-stupid treadment of an early computer)

1970 - Colossus : The Forbin Project (how is this not in there)

1971 - How to Frame a Figg (silly, but it's got a computer hacker)

1975 - Three Days of the Condor

1990 - The KGB, the Computer, and Me (PBS doc about "The Cuckoo's Egg")

</comment><comment><USER11> Also check out the AI / Cognitive Science Movie Index by Indiana University:

[https://www.indiana.edu/~cogfilms/index.php](https://www.indiana.edu/~cogfilms/index.php)

Black Mirror is missing here too, unfortunately. Several episodes revolve quite intelligently around AI, dystopian technological future, cognitive science.

</comment><comment><USER12> It would be nice to include Black Mirror as most of the show's plots revolve around the social influence of advanced technology.

Not a movie but definitely required viewing.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm going to go against the grain and say: don't watch these.

Or rather, don't prioritize watching these. Try to balance out movies and books related to your profession or hobby with those outside of it.

The world already has enough stereotypical geeks loving Ghost in the Shell, Star Wars and Star Trek, it needs more geeks having an interest in what "regular people" do and like.

<comment><USER14> That is rather offensively narrow-minded to think that "regular people" don't also enjoy those those movies. That simply having a job or hobby related to STEM somehow does not make you a regular person.

<comment><USER13> I'm not saying regular people don't enjoy these. I'm saying that people in our field have a rather unhealthy fascination with a rather narrow set of topics.

Instead of having a laser focus even for our hobbies I'd advocate a wider range of hobbies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd love to see earlier movies on this list, ie The Conversation (1974) [1]

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

</comment><comment><USER16> Some of these films are extremely bad, and that's not limited to the ones with low imdb scores. This list is in serious need of pruning.

</comment><comment><USER17> I found many must-see movies on these lists:

1\. Directors Guild of America's The 80 Best-Directed Films: [http://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All- Articles/1602-Spring-2016/...](http://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All- Articles/1602-Spring-2016/80th-Film-Poll.aspx)

2\. TSPDT's The 1,000 Greatest Films: [http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films_table.p...](http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films_table.php)

They aren't about hackers, for sure. But these two lists are more diverse than IMDb 250.

Try movies from the 60s and 70s on these lists. Lots of gems among them.

</comment><comment><USER18> For action I would add Equilibrium (it has a cyberpunk feel to it) as well as the other movie he director did that I can't recall.

Also Existenz which has a female programmer and predates the Matrix and Inception.

<comment><USER19> If you're adding (the excellent) Equilibrium, I'd say V for Vendetta too due to its influence on "Anonymous". And Fight Club because of what their end goal is.

That said, I can still remember seeing eXistenZ in the cinema:

>Death to the demoness, Allegra Geller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Off topic: Does anyone else get annoyed at bossy articles telling them what they _must_ watch, or _must_ read, or _must_ do?

I know it's just an expression, but it bugs me...

<comment><USER3> What bugs me has to do with the authors claiming their lists are "curated" when really all they've done is collect or list.

Curation indicates that there is a selectivity involved. That is not evident with this list, that or they're using a pretty un-obvious criteria.

(note the original title of the story indicated that this was a "curated list", and the actual repo still contains that language).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm 0 for Thrillers on this list and only 2 for SciFi. So my word is suspect. But still, I would recommend _startup.com_ for the documentaries.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/)

I'd also recommend _2001_ , _Repo Man_ , _Dark Star_ and _They Live_ on general principles.

</comment><comment><USER22> What makes a movie "must watch" for "every hacker and cyberpunk"?

Two criteria come to my mind:

\- The movie is likely to teach you something that will make you a better "hacker" or "cyberpunk".

\- The movie depicts what it's actually like to be a "hacker" or "cyberpunk".

Now, which of the movies on this list are going to do either of those? Probably some of the documentaries, and probably almost none of the fictions.

<comment><USER23> Cyberpunk is a culture, a style and an attitude as much as a skillset. Fiction can convey these things, sometimes better than truth can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> No AKIRA? I thought this one is pretty acclaimed, and frequently hailed as a cyberpunk classic

<comment><USER25> The plot doesn't really have much to do with computers? It was perhaps the first anime to make a splash in the US, and it is worth seeing, but I don't think I'd use "hacker" or "cyberpunk" to describe it.

<comment><USER24> Well, Blade Runner or Inception are no different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> No Real Genius? Shame.

<comment><USER27> That movie was awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Its on the list, one of my favorites from last year. ZERO DAYS (2016) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VgIayOpjEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VgIayOpjEc) [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5446858/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5446858/) [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zero_days](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zero_days)

</comment><comment><USER29> Needs 'Triumph of the Nerds' in documentaries, and 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' needs to move to any of the film sections (it's not a documentary).

</comment><comment><USER30> Not for the hacker or cyberpunk genre but I do think that 'Primer' needs to be in this list. Haven't seen more realistic time travel movie than this yet.

<comment><USER31> " _Realistic time travel_ " movie?

<comment><USER32> The forward-only time machine in Futurama is probably the only paradox-free time travel premise that's possible. Even that had a giant plot hole re: the motion of the planet, solar system, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> No Mr. Robot?

<comment><USER34> I haven't seen enough of the titles on the list to know if any of them are series, but AFAIK this is only a list of movies.

<comment><USER33> That page ought to have a list of TV series in addition to Mr. Robot: X-Files and more so its spinoff show [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Would be awesome to use InstantWatcher to show a link (if exists) to stream on Netflix or Amazon, etc.

And not a movie, but Halt and Catch Fire should be on there somewhere...

</comment><comment><USER36> Or you can just watch this:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEkrWRHCDQU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEkrWRHCDQU)

</comment><comment><USER37> My personal favorite:

"Hackers - Wizards of the Electronics Age" Starring a bunch of old school programmers/hackers!

Magnificently produced by Fabrice Florin -[http://fabriceflorin.com/](http://fabriceflorin.com/)

Watch it here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOP1LNr70aU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOP1LNr70aU)

</comment><comment><USER38> D.A.R.Y.L.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088979/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088979/)

<comment><USER39> As a young nerdy kid, this movie had such an impact on my at the time I saw it. I pretended I was a robot for months afterwards :)

<comment><USER38> And the SR71 makes an appearance. This movie still inspires me. Reminds me, I should show it to my son... is 5 too young?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think 'Real Genius' deserves a place on the list. Actual hacking is only a small part of the plot, but the rest of the movie fits the mindset well.

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

</comment><comment><USER41> Dot was a pretty good comedy that didn't get enough attention: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371647/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371647/)

It's on Vimeo: [https://vimeo.com/8919323](https://vimeo.com/8919323)

</comment><comment><USER42> Aw, I'm a hackerpunk so only 1/2 are watchable. I just don't know which half.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is a trash list. Live Free Die Hard is on there, because Kevin Smith? SMH

</comment><comment><USER44> This list should have been posted weeks ago, when the StackOverflow's 2017 survey asked us about fictional characters and I wasn't able to recall any particular title...

</comment><comment><USER45> The social network is nothIng for hackers. Most of the facts and characters are in reality not as portrayed. And itS one of the weakest movies of Fincher.

<comment><USER46> But.... he's plugged in!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It'd be nice if you could order by column. At least let the default order be by rating or alphabetical, instead of none whatsoever?

</comment><comment><USER48> Here's my list of must watch movies for actual hackers:

(list)

</comment><comment><USER49> For cyberpunk, I'd add:

\- Tetsuo: The Iron Man

\- Videodrome

</comment><comment><USER50> THX 1138 + GATTACA + The Element of Crime

</comment><comment><USER51> Missing Elysium and Children of Men.

<comment><USER49> Children of Men was awful, and it had nothing to do with hacking or cyberpunk, from what I remember.

<comment><USER52> Are you talking about the book? My wife read it and said it wasn't very good. The movie was great but I wouldn't call its gritty, near-future dystopian setting very cyberpunk either. Cyberpunk is generally "high tech, low life" but 'Children of Men' doesn't really have high tech. 'Minority Report' is more cyberpunk than 'Children of Men' (but still not that cyberpunk).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> ok THIS was my #1 80s TV show growing up : Autoaman

[http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0084978/](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0084978/)

Can i get an amen please?!

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm sure this thread will go to the summaries:

[http://n-gate.com/hackernews/](http://n-gate.com/hackernews/)

"An internet posts a 'movies for hackers' list on Git instead of using other reasonable publishing services as any human being. Hackernews spend hours complaining about how their favorite obscure movie that nobody knows or cares about wasn't included in the list"</comment>


Bitcoin Approaches $10,000 a piece - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42135963 <comment><USER2>
      Current market capitalization in US dollars:

      Global M2 money supply                  over $90.0 trillion [a]
      US dollar M2 money supply                    $13.8 trillion [b]
      Euro M2 money supply                         $13.2 trillion [c]
      All coins and banknotes in circulation        $7.6 trillion [d]
      All gold ever mined                           $7.1 trillion [e]
      Bitcoin                                 under $0.2 trillion [f]

The world needs these money-like assets to function everyday. Otherwise, the global economy would ground to a halt.

Bitcoin has very different, unique characteristics compared to the other money-like assets on the list. For example, like gold, Bitcoin's continued existence doesn't depend on the good management of any national economy; however, unlike gold, bitcoins are digital so they can be encrypted, backed up, emailed, etc. Bitcoin is truly a new kind of money-like asset.

The trillion-dollar question is, to what extent does the world need a money- like asset with Bitcoin's unique characteristics to function in the 21st century?

[a] [http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets- one-v...](http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one- visualization-2017/)

[b] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2)

[c] [http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/reports.do?node=1000003501](http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/reports.do?node=1000003501)

[d] [http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets- one-v...](http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one- visualization-2017/)

[e] [https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/17/how-does- bitcoins-...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/17/how-does-bitcoins- market-cap-stack-up-next-to-gold.aspx)

[f] [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/)

</comment><comment><USER3> _Nobody_ actually uses bitcoin for payment.

There is more or less the same places where to spend it as there was 4, 5 years ago. And they all have about the same traffic, which is nearly zero.

Most people _only_ use it for speculation. This can't end well.

<comment><USER4> I'm going to repeat myself here, but please bear with me if you haven't heard this argument before.

I respectfully disagree with the idea that Bitcoin's killer-app is to be used as a currency for transactional purposes.

I can't really think of many reasons why you would use crypto to pay for a coffee or a sandwich if you live in the West (or frankly, even most developing nations).

On the other hand, I can definitely see the utility in a censorship-resistant digital medium to store wealth. To me, this latter use case has much, much more potential to serve the unbanked (as well as the banked).

Some use cases I can think off the top of my head:

(1) You are from Syria and need to flee war and escape into Europe – however bank transfers into Europe are almost impossible if you are a common Syrian. Bitcoin allows you to take your wealth with you, in your brain, as you escape across the border, by just memorising your twelve word private key.

(2) You are from Venezuela or Zimbabwe – The government has issued capital controls and is devaluing currency by the day. You transfer your wealth into Bitcoin in order to offset capital erosion due to hyper-inflation. When the situation stabilises, you transfer your Bitcoin back into fiat.

(3) You are Saudi billionaire Al-Waleed bin Talal. The government freezes all your assets in a political coup. If you have a portion of your wealth in Bitcoin, you could protect them from government expropriation and anonymously transfer them to associates or family members abroad.

(4) You are whistleblower Julian Assance and have been cut off from the financial system as a way to censor your speech. Bitcoin allows you to have an unbreakable digital "Swiss bank account" that the authorities are not able to reach.

This reminds me of Peter Thiel's recent words about Bitcoin: "it's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments."

Reference

[1]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/bitcoin-underestimated- peter...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/bitcoin-underestimated-peter-thiel- says.html)

<comment><USER5> > I can't really think of many reasons why you would use crypto to pay for a > coffee or a sandwich if you live in the West

I can think of one: if you get paid in Bitcoin, having to buy some GBPs just so you can buy a coffee or a sandwich is a hassle.

<comment><USER6> But getting paid in Bitcoin is already a way bigger hassle than getting paid in GBP in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As the older generation doesn't get why you would buy a bitcoin and where you would keep it, the newer generation doesn't get why you would buy a shiny piece of metal as in gold bullion and where you would safely keep it.

Bitcoin market is still minuscule comparative to gold, and while most will point out that it doesn't work amazing as a currency, if it gets to like 50% of the current gold market, it is going to be worth a lot.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but bitcoin is not scarce in any meaningful sense in the long run. Using the same software alternative versions of the coin can be created. Or worse better versions ...

Gold will cease to be meaningfully scarce if we ever mine an asteroid or something like this, but the barriers to that are obviously somewhat higher.

<comment><USER9> Wrong. Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21M bitcoins that will ever exist. I could also create software alternatives of Facebook & Wikipedia, but they would have no value. Network effects are what matter.

<comment><USER10> 21M with fractions down to 0.00000000001, so while it's fixed it's also fractionable to a very small number.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure if this is the point you were making, but divisibility doesn't make something less scarce, any more than being able to cut a gold brick into nuggets means gold isn't scarce. A single Bitcoin remains exactly as scarce regardless of how it is divided.

<comment><USER11> I don't think scarcity necessarily correlates directly to value. Land values are a good example. New land is not getting created, you can subdivide it down to small pieces, yet it's worth more in some areas.

Since Bitcoin is divisible down to a small fraction, and you can trade it for whatever price you'd like, it makes more sense to me for the two parties involved in a Bitcoin transaction to take some tiny fraction of a coin and use that as a token to transfer the value from one party to another. You'd convert fiat -> BTC fraction -> fiat almost immediately.

You would have the benefit of the decentralized network to make completing the transaction much easier, and by using a fraction of a coin you'd remove risk caused by exposure to fluctuations in the value of a whole BTC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _There is also concern that Bitcoin could be vulnerable to hackers. Mr Ahmad said that recently it lost almost 20% in value on fears it was being hacked._

Am I missing something or is the hacking part nonsense?

<comment><USER7> I think he confused with ETH, he also mentions south korea banning ICOs, which has nothing to do with bitcoin.

<comment><USER13> There is a big confusion where all cryptocoins are read as bitcoin for many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Bitcoin mania appears to be well underway.

Yes, bitcoin has uses. (Including some cool, elegant and potentially very significant ones.) But despite the troubled state of the world, it does not appear to me that anything has happened that would justify the current ongoing explosion in price.

For an example of a mania in action, take a look at the price spike in tulip bulbs in the early 1800s: [http://www.thebubblebubble.com/tulip- mania/](http://www.thebubblebubble.com/tulip-mania/)

</comment><comment><USER15> To people who believe it's not a bubble. Please explain what wasn't priced in yesterday that warranted +17% today.

<comment><USER16> In 20 years, Bitcoin will either be worth $0 or $350k. (Stability and history to become a safe-haven asset something like gold.)

People don't think that the network today is +17% more valuable, but rather that the chance of Bitcoin going to zero in the next 20 years is 17% less.

Institutional investors building positions in Bitcoin makes a strong case for long-term viability, because if the govt tries to mess with something in everyone's mutual fund, the financial lobbyists will push back strongly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The previous discussion with Bitcoin crossing $9,000 is still warm (posted 19hs ago) at: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782222)

Do we have anything new to add at each 1K step announcement?

</comment><comment><USER18> I feel its too late for me to buy in and to get any value out of Bitcoin. 3 years ago (when it was around $350 per coin) I asked my friend about buying one up and I received a pretty good reason not to jump in.

3 years later and it looked like I made the wrong choice. I don't have $10,000 just hanging around to buy into one whole coin.

Oh well...

<comment><USER19> It's just as easy to buy $350 worth of bitcoin today as it was 3 years ago. There is no real reason or advantage to buying whole coins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am a bit on the fence with Bitcoin.

A few years ago I brought a little bit of altcoin and 'believed' in it. I only put a small amount but I still was nervous spending money on some 'pretend' digital asset. Within a few days it was worth half what I started with. Thinking I was in a low point of the chart, I invested a little bit more.

It then dropped again, so much I lost around 80% of the value within a week.

I then declared the money lost and saved my private keys.

Fast forward to the beginning of this year, I randomly picked up my private key from a backup drive that I was going to wipe and decided to check it's value.. around £15

As it was such a little amount I decided just to cash it out, buy a pizza and continue with my life. However, as it wasn't so straight forward to just 'cash out' I left it.

A few months later I hear the news that bitcoin is rising so checked on my altcoin (because the altcoin charts followed closely to the bitcoin charts), and there you go, I tripled my initial investment. I still declared the coins 'dead' so wasn't worried about losing it, but converted them into bitcoin as that felt most secure to me. The conversion lost me some percent but I stuck it out and have had 0.1BTC in my wallet since.

It's nice watching my little amount go up. It's not a deal breaker if I lost it, but it's now more 'alive' than 'dead' to a point I have started thinking about converting it into fiat and enjoy a good Christmas. But there is that little bit inside me now, that refuses to listen to my 'the coins are dead, and I wouldn't really lose anything' mentality which is unfortunate because I feel as the price goes up that feeling will cement harder to a point I would never cash it out.

</comment><comment><USER21> I get the feeling a lot of people are going to get a very nasty shock in the not too distant future.

Other than buying purely for speculation, does Bitcoin really have any purpose right now, at scale? Geniunely curious.

<comment><USER5> Bitcoin is the world's first way to send money to anybody else, anywhere in the world, almost instantaneously, without asking permission from anybody, and without trusting any intermediary.

That's huge. Bitcoin is to money what the internet was to communications.

<comment><USER22> But I do trust intermediaries. Intermediaries are fine. And I think it's appropriate that large international transactions should be scrutinised by authorities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think most people buy Bitcoin for its speculative value but never use it as a currency to actually buy or sell stuff.

<comment><USER5> I use it as a currency to both buy and sell stuff.

<comment><USER24> If the gp had said "no one uses it to..." your anecdotal sample of one response would have been sufficient to disprove the claim. However, it is at best anecdotal and at worst completely irrelevant to the actual claim made (i.e. that _most_ BTC users are investing in the currency).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel that bitcoin is unstoppable.

It offers massive, tangible benefits. Money that is not controlled by corrupt institutions completely changes the game.

There is an entire industry being built around it. Thousands of engineers are creating new businesses as we speak.

It has different properties to stocks. The more people that convert their money to bitcoin, the more use it has. This is a basic property of currency. While people will say you can't buy much with it now, the very fact that massive amounts of people are now acquiring bitcoin gives incentive to people to start accepting bitcoin as a form of payment.

Most governments can now no longer make it illegal. The horse has bolted. By the time it is made illegal, millions of people will have bitcoin and you will be committing political suicide. They will try to regulate it in a way that benefits large corporations though.

I believe the transfer of money away from questionable stocks like facebook, into something based on real value like bitcoin, will crash the share market.

<comment><USER26> The problem is that bitcoin cannot be a currency - because it cannot facilitate more than 7 transactions per second, this is many orders of magnitude not enough for a currency. It can be something similar to gold - mostly a value store. But personally I have doubts - first of all the energy costs are crazy. I think it will be eventually replaced by a POS coin - proving that the value store function of something that new is not very reliable.

[https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of- work-8d8265def194](https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194)

<comment><USER5> 7 transactions per second isn't enough for it to be an everyday currency for everyone.

It's certainly enough to be an everyday currency for the people who want to use it as an everyday currency at the moment, and Lightning Network will expand the capability massively.</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla to close retail stores, only sell cars online – Roadshow - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-close-stores-online-sales-model-3/ <comment><USER2> How many stores do they have? (too lazy to search)</comment>


RailCar: Rust Implementation of the Open Containers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oracle/railcar <comment><USER2> Is this project still active? There hasn't been much activity on the Oracle blog, except for the release announcement.

<comment><USER3> The most recent commit was in Sept' 2018, and the primary author of RailCar is Vish who jumped to Heroku (SalesForce) in Nov' 2018\. I'd speculate that this is related.. either this was a pet project for Vish and died when he left, or he left because the project was frozen. Either way, the project seems dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nitpick: The installation instructions aren't very friendly for someone who hasn't installed Rust before, as it asks them to install 2 different toolchains even though they presumably only need one, and then install a separate musl target for each toolchain even if they don't want to use musl. Also `rustup target install` isn't a documented subcommand, perhaps you meant `rustup target add`?

<comment><USER5> They should obviously dockerize it. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain what is different between containers and Open Containers, and why it matters?

<comment><USER7> It is a specification for the various parts of what makes up a container. All container runtimes and images out there implement the specification so there's portability amongst tools: [https://www.opencontainers.org](https://www.opencontainers.org)

[https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime- spec/blob/master/i...](https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime- spec/blob/master/implementations.md) [https://github.com/opencontainers/image- spec/blob/master/imp...](https://github.com/opencontainers/image- spec/blob/master/implementations.md)</comment></comment>


Azure Container Registry Preview - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/campaigns/container-registry/ <comment><USER3> Surprised that this item hit the front page and not the announcement on open sourcing ACS, Adding Kubernetes: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/blog/azure-container-servi...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/blog/azure-container-service-the-cloud-s-most-open-option-for-containers/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool to see this preview make Hacker News, so also FYI, we've got Visual Studio Tooling (also in Preview) for Docker if anyone is interested.

Visual Studio Tools for Docker - <USER2> [https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/0f5b2caa- ea00...](https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/0f5b2caa- ea00-41c8-b8a2-058c7da0b3e4)

Also you can get the full details of this Azure announcements in this blog post: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-container- regis...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-container-registry- preview/)

p.s. for those who don't know yet I work for Microsoft :).

</comment><comment><USER5> We had an intern build this for ACR - [https://github.com/azure/acr-web- manager](https://github.com/azure/acr-web-manager)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is very timely news. I'm involved in a fairly large project to migrate some enterprise infrastructure onto Azure. We've hit a road block with ACS and their newly announced ACS-Engine addresses all of that [0].

This Container Registry is icing on the cake.

[0] [https://github.com/Azure/acs-engine](https://github.com/Azure/acs-engine)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting to see this announced / posted here around the same time as Hyper.sh [0], i'm curious as to what the pricing will be!

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12891584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12891584)

<comment><USER8> There is no additional charge aver and above the normal Azure compute charges (I'm the PM for this work in Azure)</comment></comment>


Understanding npm - <AUTHOR> http://unpm.nodesource.com/

<comment><USER2> Very informative! Though most of the animations were missing/didn't load on Chrome on Windows.

<comment><USER3> Worked ok for me on Win7 x64 Ultimate with Chrome 43.0.2357.124 m.

Could be a plugin interfering? I have Privacy Badger installed and sometimes have to enable certain third parties I think or know I can trust before I see some content on a page every now and again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > After removing all of these, we're left with 16,771 of our original 32,768 > packages that meet our criteria for "good quality modules", just a small > fraction of our original sample.

Is a half a "small fraction"?

That's just a small nitpick though, the data and visualisations here are pretty great. I don't think I've ever seen something like website statistics (essentially) visualised in such a way

</comment><comment><USER5> "Sadly, it looks like this visualisation won't work on this device"

I'm on a Chromebook Pixel, running: Version 43.0.2357.125 (64-bit) Platform 6946.58.0 (Official Build) stable-channel link

</comment><comment><USER5> Funny, it works on my Chromebook Pixel, running Chrome Version 44.0.2403.52 beta (64-bit), under crouton linux of course.

</comment><comment><USER6> > After removing all of these, we're left with 16,771 of our original 32,768 > packages

What, I thought you said there were 157,000 packages?

<comment><USER7> > Of those, here's 32,768 of npm's most downloaded packages.

It's on "Registry Growth". Pressing next 4 times from the beginning.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I didn't see that.

> Pressing next 4 times from the beginning.

Behold! Resource identification under glorious web 9.0</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: who would you recommend for failed hard drive data recovery? - <AUTHOR>

I have a physical hard drive failure. Google search for data recovery brings up a zillion services proving data recovery -- they all seem to  smell fishy. They all have some sort of  Class A or something clean room facility.I was on the phone with one service -- their quote was from US$3k to US$7k.  Is this normal ?  Also is there anything else I should consider while selecting a service. <comment><USER2> What exactly has happened to it?

If it "clicks" or seems to spin up then stop when you apply power (put in an external drive enclosure perhaps to control power separately), then possibly something on the "motherboard" of the drive has failed and the drive platters are fine.

In that case, buying a drive of the same manufacturer, size and model number as close as possible in firmware level to the failed one, and swapping the motherboard may work for you, as it did for me.

If there is physical damage to the platters you will need to spend a lot.

The two most reputable that I know of are OnTrack Data Recovery (<http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/>) and Drive Savers (<http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/>).

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it seems to be a controler chip or interface failurevon the drive. The motor is spinning; there are no clicks. But the drive is not "seen" by the BIOS.

Gparted etc. software based solutions failed as the drive could not be see,

I took the drive out , put that on my eSata external drivevay -- same problem -- the drive would spin but no the drive would be invisible.

<comment><USER2> In my case, I searched for a donor drive that was as close as possible to what I had, on eBay, bought it and that worked. It will certainly be the cheapest thing to try.

It sounds like the mechanical part of the drive is working fine, and it is reasonable to assume the data is still there; so swapping motherboards is the least expensive and least stressful way to go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your suggestion is awesome . I have never done motherboard swapping on a haddrive-- but could you please blog about it and post a link here. Right now, given the state of mind I am in, I am too nervous to try it on my own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Normally, the manufacturer of your hard disk drive provides data recovery services for a fee. You should contact them first since they should be the ones whom you could trust to be able to retrieve the contents of your hard disc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestion.My Drive is Seagate Barracuda. I am taking with Seagate data recovery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recommend OnTrack. I first used them 15 years ago, so I can assert that they're not fishy. Their clean room is in Reston, Virginia.

I've paid anywhere from $700 - $1800 per incident, and always had close to 100% data recovery.

I'm sure there are other great services out there as well, but I've been loyal to OnTrack ever since they recovered 2GB of digitized home video in 1996.

<http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/>

<comment><USER5> Ontrack wrote the software we used to use at a computer recycling centre for drive testing - the software was bought by one of the major disk drive makers and badged as their own disk testing solution. Based on this alone, assuming they're the same company, I'd trust them more than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have used drive savers before (that was years ago), they have been around for a long time. As well most drive manufactures offer recovery services. Granted they are usually just subing it out, but they do chose reputable vendors. There is a lot of sleaze in this industry so be careful it is worse that auto mechanic scams by 10 fold. As well a high price would not scare me as much as a low ball quote. A low ball is a guarantee that they are just going to try to run some software tools on it. A high quote does not guarantee that they are not so it is not a great indicator.

</comment><comment><USER7> At least the quote you got is more honest than many. I tried one once that quoted a reasonable fee but once they got their hands on the drive it appeared that (despite the telephone conversation lies) the initial fee was for an evaluation only - now they wanted the big bucks.

Interestingly, I declined and asked for the drive to be returned - when it came back I found I was able to mount it and extract the contents - it turns out the journey was good for it. I am certainly not advising giving the drive a good shake but it worked for me.

</comment><comment><USER8> 2-5 k is normal if the drive is so far gone they need to take it apart to get to the data.

CBL Data worked for me in the past but That was a few years ago. They will evaluate your drive for free and tell you what they can get off data wise and the cost. If you want to proceed they then do the work if not they send you drive back. They were suggested to me by a seagate support person at the time.

Have you tried to pull the data off with a recovery software using the drive as a slave.

Are you on OSX, windows, or Linux?

<comment><AUTHOR> Linux But I have tried pretty much all disk recovery techniques. It seems to be drive chip issue.

<comment><USER8> Who makes the drive? Many of the manufacturers have diagnostic programs you can run to test if its motherboard or read head issues.

If its not making funny sounds (read head / platter damage) you may be able to swap the drive chip guts with another similar drive and get the data back yourself without sending it in. If its under warranty you can get a replacement from the manufacturer if not eBay might have one or some of the other asset recovery chop shops you can find parts for computers servers etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have used <http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/> to recover a disk which failed due to mechanical head failure. The cost was O($3000), expensive, but less costly than trying to reconstruct the lost data. I have also used Steve Gibson's spinrite program (<http://www.grc.com/intro.htm>) which does very low level recovery and repair. YMMV depending upon exactly what kind of error you have.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for your suggestions!!

I am going with Seagate Data recovery; they have inofrmade me that the Seagate Barracuda Drive that I have has a known firmware issue. They will fix it(firmware flash ) for free in approximately 4 weeks. Or approx $600 if I want to get it done in 2 to 5 days.

Now that is a a cool business model : make money even with bad quality !!</comment>


Announcing Limited Availability of DigitalOcean Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://blog.digitalocean.com/announcing-limited-availability-of-digitalocean-kubernetes/ <comment><USER2> I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has tried it how well it integrates into their storage, load balancers, dns and firewall offerings.

Prior to this, it was possible to manually setup a cluster with kops or kubicorn and configure external-storage yourself for volumes. There was also digitalocean-cloud-controller-manager for load balancers.

How about cluster upgrades, will Digital Ocean provide a way to upgrade k8s versions on deployed clusters?

Looking forward to trying it out at some point, congratulations on the release.

<comment><USER3> Hey, Nick from DigitalOcean here. We're working on upgrade functionality, and it should be available soon. Here's our K8s PM on this topic in the blog comments [https://blog.digitalocean.com/announcing-limited- availabilit...](https://blog.digitalocean.com/announcing-limited-availability- of-digitalocean-kubernetes/#comment-4123718531)

As for test user feedback I'll leave that to others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice to see a relatively simple option to spinning up K8S in the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER5> Next up is Netgear? New home router with K8s!</comment>


Pen.io is Hiring Remote PHP Devs - <AUTHOR>

Pen.io was launched here on HackerNews early this year. Since then, my weekend project has turned in a startup backed by some incredible investors. We're now looking for some remote PHP devs to work on Pen.io.<p>Email firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> I would love to apply but sadly uni has eaten all my time up but good luck in your search.

</comment><comment><USER3> interested will do

and here's something i just finished

<http://uwdda.org> has an api for craigslist</comment>


Rare Earths: The Next Resource Shortage? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/opinion/the-next-resource-shortage.html <comment><USER2> This guy is several years out of date. A few years ago, in 2011, there was a rare earths shortage, made worse by export restrictions from China. Prices went way up. Then Molycorp got the old Mountain Pass, CA mine going again, with environmental controls even the Sierra Club says are OK. Now prices are back down, Molycorp is producing at a loss, and a big Australian mine is starting up.[1][2]

There's also been progress in making motor magnets with smaller amounts of rare earths, which has cut demand.[3][4]

So today we need less, there are more sources, and the technology to solve the waste problem from production is working. This is now a non-problem.

[1] [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-22/rare-earth-miners- face...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-22/rare-earth-miners-face-tough- market/6786970) [2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2015/06/26/three...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2015/06/26/three- lessons-from-the-woeful-tale-of-molycorp/) [3] [http://www.nissan- global.com/EN/NEWS/2012/_STORY/121120-02-e...](http://www.nissan- global.com/EN/NEWS/2012/_STORY/121120-02-e.html) [4] [http://www.ims.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/Session7a_01_M...](http://www.ims.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/Session7a_01_Mikami_Hiroyuki_Technologies_to_replace_rare_earth_elements.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Abraham is basically completely wrong.

The name is somewhat confusing. Rare earths aren't particularly rare. They're about a hundred thousand times more common than actually rare metals like platinum and gold, and about a hundred thousand times less common than common metals like iron, magnesium, and sodium: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust)

Some of the metals mentioned in the article, like cobalt, ar neither rare nor rare-earth. Others, like indium and gallium, are about as rare and as expensive as silver, but are used in much smaller quantities.

Yes, rare elements help a lot with efficient wind turbines and CIGS thin-film solar cells (although note that CIGS contains rare metals, but no rare earths). But they aren't used at all in the silicon photovoltaic cells that dominate the solar market now and for the foreseeable future, which don't use any rare minerals at all. And you can build efficient wind turbines without rare earths if you have to; you just use field coils instead of rare-earth permanent magnets. (In fact, Abraham reports that GE wind turbines have already made this switch.)

In direct contradiction to what Abraham says, nearly all chips are 100% rare- earth free and rare-metal free, except for gold, which is in no danger of supply shortages. A small fraction of high-speed bipolar chips use gallium arsenide, which depends on rare gallium, but they're almost entirely limited to microwave-and-up RF analog circuitry these days.

And, of course, rare metals are 100% recyclable. They aren't a resource we can use up, except by launching them on space probes or burning them in nuclear reactors. If we're allocating them inefficiently, we can melt down our existing air conditioners and wind turbines to redeploy our neodymium to higher-priority uses. It won't be long before people are digging LCD panels out of garbage dumps to recover the thin-film indium: maybe five to thirty years.

This is a big issue if you're in the business of making motors, generators, or LCD panels. It affects your material costs significantly, and indeed indium cost volatility has been a major problem over the last decade or two. But it's not an issue at the level of human society as a whole.

I think the overwrought rhetoric here is deeply harmful because we really are facing _real_ resource shortages: oil (though not this year), ocean-water buffers, and our atmospheric capacity to handle carbon dioxide. Hyping up bogus "resource shortage" dangers like this will just lead to the public dismissing the real dangers.

<comment><USER4> You hit the nail on the head here. The real issue with abundant rare earths is that over 95% of the global shipment of rare earths has historically been controlled by China.

Because of this, there's significant exposure to their export policies and hence high price volatility for these materials. For instance, in 2011, Neodymium saw a significant surge in price just because the government decided to limit export quotas.

<comment><USER5> but also at the same time, the prices of these metals are very low, thus suppressing interest in developing new mines. China is playing a fine balancing game here, because if they were to highly restrict access, then prices would justify heavy investment.

They control it yet ironically cant do anything with that control or else it will sow the seeds of destruction of that control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this became a true national security threat the US would have production in a few weeks, it's just that right now it's much cheaper to outsource this to China.</comment>


Genode OS Framework 16.05 (with Rust support and 4.4.3 Linux drivers) - <AUTHOR> http://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/16.05 <comment><USER2> The most interesting aspect of this work is how it continues to try to integrate best-of-breed components for each need it has. There's a microkernel, seL4, and Muen separation kernels for most, trusted part. NOVA for a more rigorous approach to virtualization. Nitpicker GUI for reduced issues with GUI's, esp spoofing or screen-scraping. The use of POLA and strict, resource management in architecture itself. Now a port of Rust to enable already-isolated apps on a tiny kernel to be written in a safer language.

It's always tougher to do new projects this way as your team works extra hard to get everything in usable shape and integrated. The end result will have more potential for reliability or security since it's using better architecture and design. They're steadily trying to get it there with one interesting release after another.

<comment><AUTHOR> I cannot find binary downloads like an ISO image. Were you able to?

<comment><USER2> Source-only with it and toolchain here:

[http://genode.org/download/release- archive](http://genode.org/download/release-archive)

I don't speak for them but I think it's to self-select for preferred users at moment. Those are technical people willing to try various configurations and do bug reports. Also, I believe they plan to do OEM-style where third parties can create, package, and distribute a specific configuration. Thats one sore spot in the project where someone needs to get it up to parity with something like Qubes. They need at least one, general configuration for laypeople running Linux VM or apps.</comment></comment></comment>


Biomarkers and ageing: The clock-watcher - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/biomarkers-and-ageing-the-clock-watcher-1.15014 <comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

I have read Josh Mitteldorf blog[1] in the past, but was completely unaware of his line of reasoning regarding aging. This sentence[2] caught my attention:

 _Genes are turned on that destroy us with inflammation and cell senescence and auto-immunity and programmed cell death, while the systems that protect us from pathogens and from free radical damage are gradually shut down. Evolution has left nothing to chance._

And then, the reference to the "Gilgamesh project" seems appropriate:

 _As of now, the GILGA-Mesh project is dominated by numbers geeks (like me) who practice the "Google approach" to bioinformatics. Huge databases of gene expression are screened for epigenetic candidates that seem to be well- correlated with good outcomes. I think what we need is an infusion of biolochemists who understand something about the body's signaling networks, and can orient us toward "upstream" and "downstream" molecules_ [2]

So, I am just posting this in the hope that some biolochemist wants to join this project.

[1] [http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/](http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/)

[2] [http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2016/05/09/epigenetics...](http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2016/05/09/epigenetics- of-aging-and-prospects-for-rejuvenation/)</comment>


Hacking the DSP-W215, Again, Again, Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.devttys0.com/2014/05/hacking-the-dsp-w215-again-again-again/

<comment><AUTHOR> Context: DSP-W215 is a 'smart plug' \- something that allows you to control an outlet's on/off state remotely via your LAN. ( [http://www.dlink.com/us/en/home-solutions/connected- home/sma...](http://www.dlink.com/us/en/home-solutions/connected-home/smart- plugs/dsp-w215) )

This is the 4th vulnerability found in this unit. If I remember correctly a patch was released after each reported vulnerability. D-Link's software unit (or whoever wrote the software for this) really needs to step up their game it seems...

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a class of devices (consumer embedded+networked) practically guaranteed to have a decent amount of in-house software sitting a while with little external scrutiny. I think most consumer companies with a web interface on their router have messed up at some time or another... not to mention countless outright back doors.</comment>


Does Fatherhood Make You Happy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1202940,00.html <comment><USER2> Fatherhood makes -me- happy. I don't care about how others feel about it.

Unfortunately, this is a horrible article on a fascinating subject: hedonistic psychology. If you haven't read Dan Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness", you're missing out. A better introduction to what he has to say can be found here: <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/97>

</comment><comment><USER3> This has to be in the top 10 dumbest things I've read online, written by a professional of course. I studied psychology, sociology and I carried on reading on them both well past finishing my college courses on them. This article is flawed and the reasons are three-fold:

Firstly, they discuss hedonistic pleasure. This is essentially the pleasure of getting fat, lazy and dying of hardened arteries. It isn't happiness, it's a base instinct well below our consciousness that is designed to enjoy sugars, sex and laziness programmed into us as a survival mechanism. Essentially the more you eat, have sex and do nothing, the better chance you -had- of surviving; now not so much.

Secondly, they poorly evaluate the pleasure of accomplishment. Your higher brain is designed to dump a load of endorphins into your system, because some minor pain/discomfort has been rewarded. Breaking down into tears at your kids graduation ceremony is artificial, it isn't programmed into people like feeling happy when they see their kid. You get so overly joyed when your children accomplish something because it is something that is a hell of a lot better for you than all the hedonistic pleasures combined, hence why they -do- wipe out all the minor feelings that led up to the accomplishment, essentially because it was worth it!

Thirdly, heroin blocks endorphin (the happy chemical, as well as 3 other chemicals') production. This is completely the opposite of kids, who can amplify the production. Heroin is a drug that literally disables your ability to be happy, I somehow don't see the similarity to kids here. He's comparing delayed gratification with instant gratification and immense delayed suffering/death...

I believe my three points are sufficient, however I must add that hedonistic psychology is an amazing subject. Although that being said, it is fascinating in a way that should educate you to do everything -BUT- the hedonistic pleasures.

<comment><USER2> Read his book "Stumbling on Happiness". He addresses the first two of your concerns, and it's a fascinating book. (As for your third point, I think you missed what he was trying to say: that if you create a myopia around any one thing, it tends to exaggerate its effects.)

And you're right that there's more to life than happiness, such as fulfillment and love. Being a Dad is, like the Marines, the hardest job you'll ever love. I wouldn't change it for the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> yes parenting is hard and quite different from self indulgent activities such as shopping and taking heroin - but does it make you less happy? duh

the smile and sound of little feet running to the door when you walk in the door is better than any thing you can buy or inject.

<comment><USER5> could not have said it better myself

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's funny how every response in this thread confirms the three reasons mentioned in the article - in particular reason one: cognitive dissonance.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am really looking forward to going sledding tomorrow morning.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't think anyone should take this article as a personal affront to their life choices. It's an interesting tangent in the broader field of psychology, just as Freakonomics is interesting the context of the broader field of economics.

Of course the greater part of caring for young children is unpleasant; it is not news that changing diapers sucks, that trying to get a 4 year-old to put on his shoes when you're running 10 minutes late is infuriating, etc. But the shining moments of bliss are so profound, so stunning.

I hear running marathons can be largely unpleasant, as well, but the feeling of crossing the finish line is unparalleled.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very tired. Very happy.

</comment><comment><USER10> Worthwhile en devours have hard parts that might not be as enjoyable as watching a movie or a trip to Cancun!? Holy cow, give that guy a Pulitzer!

Next week he's got an article planned about how people often don't find their jobs as much fun as DisneyLand!

</comment><comment><USER11> Measures of happiness studys seem to be one of the key areas for nonsense research and journalism. I think the thing to take from this is that small increases in long-term average happiness aren't something we desire. Which isn't very surprising because the way to maximise that kind of happiness is to remove all struggle and conflict.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this says something about the issue (it's the top link on Reddit right now): <http://www.paralleldesign.com/mckinney/kevin-01.htm>

</comment><comment><USER13> And the punch-line of what appeared to be the phoned-in disjointed ramblings of a hungover journalist trying to hit his deadline:

 _Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert._

</comment><comment><USER14> It was my daughter's first birthday today. Yes.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes it does make me happy. With any luck, those who wouldn't find parenthood a source of happiness and joy won't breed.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hell yeah!

</comment><comment><USER17> YES!</comment>


Human Values Comparison Over Centuries - <AUTHOR> https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=faith%2Clove%2Ccharity%2Cjustice%2Ckindness%2Ccourage%2Chonor%2Cloyalty%2Cwisdom%2Cknowledge%2Corder%2C+money&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1600&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cmoney%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bmoney%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BMoney%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cfaith%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bfaith%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BFaith%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Clove%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Blove%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BLove%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Ccharity%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bcharity%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BCharity%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cjustice%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bjustice%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BJustice%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Ckindness%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bkindness%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BKindness%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Ccourage%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bcourage%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BCourage%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Chonor%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bhonor%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BHonor%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cloyalty%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bloyalty%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BLoyalty%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cwisdom%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bwisdom%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BWisdom%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cknowledge%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bknowledge%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BKnowledge%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Corder%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Border%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BOrder%3B%2Cc0 Just a curiosity<p>http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=faith%2Clove%2Ccharity%2Cjustice%2Ckindness%2Ccourage%2Chonor%2Cloyalty%2Cwisdom%2Cknowledge%2Corder <comment><USER2> We've come a long ways.

Consider that the Coliseum in Rome was originally designed to be flooded, so that mock naval battles could be staged. The losers would die of drowning. Later they staged gladiator battles, where the loser would be run through with a sword instead.

The populace of Rome regarded that as great entertainment.

Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra, the author of "Don Quijote", was drafted by the king of Spain to fight in a war. When the war was over, Cervantes was left to find his own way home - the king didn't provide any return transportation. He was kidnapped, then held for ransom for five years.

The United States Marine Corps was formed specifically to put an end to that sort of hostage ransoming. The Barbary Pirates would capture merchant ships that were trying to enter or exit the Mediterranean, then send word to the crew's friends and families that they must pay a ransom if they wanted to ever see them alive again.

I'm not saying humanity is free of evil, but surely it is far better than it once was.</comment>


What company will become the next big cloud? - <AUTHOR> What company do you think will be able to bring decentralized technology to the people and become the next biggest cloud platform? MaidSafe, Internxt, DFINITY, IPFS, Substratum? <comment><USER2> Digital Ocean</comment>


New Zealand plans further restrictions to gun ownership - <AUTHOR> https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/zealand-plans-restrictions-gun-ownership-65586926 <comment><USER2> I never saw a country passing laws so fast and doing stuff instead of just talking like New Zealand

Amazing</comment>


The Porsche Taycan Turbo EV Redefines Speed and Acceleration - <AUTHOR> https://www.automobilemag.com/news/2020-porsche-taycan-turbo-ev-electric-ride-review-photos/ <comment> java-man How does it redefines speed and acceleration??

"While the P100D Tesla versions are even quicker off the mark than the hottest landshark from Stuttgart, the repeatability of such a task is what allegedly separates the wheat from the chaff."

Not sure what is wheat and what is chaff in this context.</comment>


Ask HN: Any service out there for titles/phrases/names/etc. - <AUTHOR>

Writing a small helper class to suggest/auto-complete a text field with some commonly used names, titles, phrases etc. Helps to avoid misspellings, as well as not having to remember the entire title or what you have. For example, not many of you can write Arnold Sc....gger's name without misspelling - so in that case I would like to suggest. So I simply connected Google's auto-suggest to my textbox. But that's not a gr8 solution, as typing 'Arnold' gives me lot of useless junk such as "arnold schwarzenegger soundboard" and "arnold schwarzenegger movies" - because that's often searched upon. Now, Wiki is a good solution - they have got indexes too, and a great one, exactly the kind I am looking for. But they are alphabetically sorted, not by popularity. So even typing 'Arnold Sc' also doesn't get anywhere close to the answer.<p>Anyone has any other recommendation? <comment><USER2> You would have to create a dictionary where you can weight words (by frequency, most likely), and write a matcher that runs as a user types.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seed a list from Wiki, then add weightings according to what your users type in?</comment>


Ask HN: How to help my friend land a developer job? - <AUTHOR> Hey folks, I'm a software developer in Canada and have been full time for roughly 3 years. I have a friend who's been trying to become a developer for about 1.5 years after graduating from a college with programming diploma (it's a 2 year long program and not a computer science or university level engineering degree). He's 35 years old, done 2 not-too-impressive co-op terms, and now working part-time (about 15-25 hours per week) at a restaurant. He's quite desperate now, as he interviewed at a number of places but didn't an offer from any of them, but thinks he's too late to search other career paths (I know, it's never too late to start anything, but I can understand him when I think about all those years on college and studies, besides I can't think of anything else in particular he excels at or enjoys). And to be honest, I don't think he has enough technical or problem solving skills to qualify for a full time developer position. That's why I haven't referred him to my employer yet. So I'd really love to help him get those skills needed to land on a developer position. I'm hesitant to tell him to just work hard, because he needs a good direction he can commit to. Should I tell him to complete a not-so-trivial application development project? Or should I tell him to work on theories (data structures, algorithms, OOP, design patterns)? He's been learning React and done a few tiny projects in it. He lacks practical skills in general, but lacks theoretical knowledge even more.<p>I'm really hoping he will make his way. These days I'm starting to even worry about his mental health. Any advice will be a huge help!! <comment><USER2> maybe consider another career path - theres far better opportunities if you broaden your search.</comment>